Retrospect
by notmanos
Summary: Post X2: Still reeling from events in Elysium, Logan returns to Vancouver, only to find something from his recent, dark past awaiting him. And Bob has to face angry Powers while trying to find the true mastermind behind the near apocalypse.
1. Part 1

Disclaimer: The character of Wolverine & the X Men is owned by 20th Century Fox and Marvel Comics. No copyright infringement intended. The characters of Angel are owned by 20th Century Fox and Mutant Enemy. Bob and his bunch are all mine.  
  
N.B.: Takes place shortly after "X2", and directly after "Elysium".  
  
____________  
  
RETROSPECT  
  
____________  
  
1  
  
He left for Vancouver shortly after the funerals.  
  
Logan had to admit - to himself if no one else - that he really didn't know Tom that well at all; all he knew was Tom resented the shit out of him. It was Xia that broke his heart, and wouldn't let him go.  
  
Poor girl. He could still remember her telling him back at that Organization warehouse in Death valley, under Bob's influence, "You were the most important thing to me … I didn't mean to fuck everything up …" and he still had no exact idea what she was talking about, except it scared him, somewhere deep in the pit of his soul. She apologized to him, but he had never gotten past the fact that he felt like he had failed her in some earth shattering, fundamental way. That was why he felt no compelling need to figure out if he remembered anything about her; he felt bad enough as it was. But now he got to put her in the ground, like so many people before her, and he knew his failure had destroyed her life. And yet, he was still such a fucking coward he didn't want to face it.  
  
("She's a pretty screwed up kid, Logan. The Organization had a lot of fun with her too. She thinks maybe she loved Wolverine.")  
  
Scott was feeling guilty since they died on his team, and it was his fault "Cressida was there" (Logan hadn't understood that one), but even so he didn't take it as hard as he could have. Maybe because it was obvious Xia wouldn't have died unless she had explicitly chosen to do so - and of course, she had. She wasn't killed more than she had committed suicide, simply by shutting down her force field.  
  
There had been some good news. Marc was up and around, and although hardly a hundred percent, he decided to go home to Baltimore to recuperate. "No offense, but kids make me squirrelly," he told him, and Logan could sympathize. Spider went with him, as they were working on a "project" together. He suspected what it was, and told them to call him if they ever needed help.  
  
("We can never alter our past," Xia had told him. "But perhaps we can atone for it.")  
  
To the relief of the general population, Bob and Helga took the Sisters with them when they left, and Amaranth did the whole "vampire revoking spell" thing before she zapped off, so the Sisters could never drop in uninvited for tea. That pleased everyone no end. The girls just didn't make friends and influence people.  
  
No one had mentioned Jean yet, but he knew it was only a matter of time. Not only did Storm give him the occasional funny look, but Xavier was getting closer to regaining consciousness every day, and it was only a matter of time before the three hundred pound war god in the middle of the room had to be acknowledged. Getting Yasha's stuff in order was just the excuse he needed to get out of there.  
  
('I never meant to hurt you, Logan.")  
  
It took him about two and a half days to drive there, which was good considering British Columbia was on the other side of the country, but not as fast as he could have gone. He was, in a way, enjoying his solitude, but he found he had ghosts for companions; ones that would not relinquish him even to his old familiar nightmares. When he tried to sleep, he'd inevitably have these nightmares where he was swallowed in darkness, but he would hear distant voices but be unable to make out the exact words. But he knew one of the voices belonged to Xia - and he would wake up in a heart stuttering panic, because he didn't want to know.  
  
He was very tired, and he knew he was getting bad. He pulled over into an all hours diner, not a truck stop but an adjunct to the interstate that might as well have been, and while he was trying to force down high octane coffee that made his taste buds hurt (he gave up on the burger, as the first could of bites went down like lead balls), he could hear the radio the cook was listening to in the back. It was a hard rock station, and Logan startled himself by realizing he was whispering the words to a song under his breath. "So you couldn't dam that river, and it washed me so far away." Did he even know what the fucking song was? He guessed it was Alice In Chains, just because Layne Staley's raspy snarl was pretty unmistakable, but he was sure he had never heard the song before. So how did he know the lyrics? (He was pretty sure he knew how it started too - "I broke you in the canyon, I drowned you in the lake." Maybe he knew the song because it sounded like a litany of his life.)  
  
Too many new things seemed familiar, brought with them a taste of déjà vu that he couldn't honestly reconcile with anything else in his Swiss cheese mind. He supposed he could blame the song on Bob - Bob really liked the grunge bands; maybe he picked it up from his mind - but what about the rest of it? The back roads he had taken for the first time, or so he thought, seemed oddly familiar, as did the make and colors of certain cars, the profile of a person he had never seen before at a crosswalk shouting mindlessly into their cell phone, the smell of burning wet newspapers in a rusty metal drum that once held industrial solvents.   
  
Right now, he was chalking it up to exhaustion. It was the kind that made his head feel like it was seething, boiling away his consciousness like morning dew. He was really sorry caffeine wouldn't work on him, but at least the horrible rocket fuel aftertaste would keep him up for a while. He feared he was getting soft, being with the X-Men and Bob so long, or maybe his mind was finally taking in all this god and multiple dimension shit in, and breaking down under the strain.  
  
(Or healing - holy shit, what if this was healing?)  
  
Maybe it was the ghosts. All of them, his private army of remembered regrets. Right, this was it; he was hallucinating, and getting maudlin, which meant his mind was getting soft, which meant he needed sleep before he started seeing Xia and Yasha on a street corner, trying to get him to pull over for a latte.  
  
God, he was a wimp. He could remember when he could go five days without sleep. Of course, by that time he was usually talking to someone only he could see - and sometimes smell - but damn it, he could keep going. So what if he was legally insane?  
  
By the time he hit Vancouver, the sky was the color of rust, and he was still soaked from the rain squall he encountered on the Alberta border; the addition of the wind chill was making him shiver, and he was pretty sure his balls had shriveled up to raisins. See? He knew he was a puss now - he couldn't even take a little cold.  
  
He found the sad restored Victorian rooming house where Yasha had her apartment, and on the way in the downstairs foyer, he found a sleek black Manx cat sitting on a small side table piled with mail, and the envelop on top had a familiar name on it. That didn't say Yasha, did it?  
  
He moved closer, making the snaggletooth cat twitch an ear back in annoyance, but it made no other move as he approached. "You a bad omen, or are you the guard cat? Someone's familiar?" He asked it, as he picked up the envelope. Indeed, it said Yasha on it - no last name given, barely a street address. The post office had earned its money here; it had a Japanese postage mark.   
  
He opened the butter yellow envelope, and didn't know what he expected to find, but perhaps a note from a friend, a death threat, something. But when he tore it open, it was empty.  
  
The cat got up and walked over to him, brushing against his arm with a tentative purr, and jostled the envelope, causing something to dislodge. What fell to the polished wood table in the cat's wake was a tiny, colorful rectangle - a folded one million yen note. He peered inside the envelope and shook it briskly, but nothing else came out. Money? Who would send her money? Her banker?  
  
"Good cat," he said, pocking the yen and giving it a scratch behind its ear. It really liked that, and purred like a motorboat.  
  
He sifted through the rest of the mail, but found nothing more specifically addressed to her. The cat kept rubbing up against him, and it did have nice fur. Obviously a well fed, pampered cat, which made him wonder who let it out. Or maybe it was the "house" cat, a lobby fixture. He'd never been at Yasha's long enough to notice.  
  
He headed up the red carpeted staircase, and even though he had locked his own jaw to keep his teeth from chattering, he found himself humming that damn song from the diner. Oh yeah, he was in full on crazy mode now.  
  
The cat followed him, actually pacing him up the stairs, going up a level and sitting on the bottom step, waiting for him to catch up. "So, cat, who do ya think sent Yash money?" He asked it, as the smell of coffee and bacon and eggs started to waft through the former boarding house, added to the idiot murmur of morning television barely heard through thick walls. People were starting to stir, get ready for the daily grind, and here he was, about to collapse from exhaustion. But these were normal people, who probably never realized a vampire lived on the top floor, and probably didn't know their world almost ended a couple of days ago.  
  
The cat didn't answer him, so he figured he wasn't that far gone.  
  
It followed him up to the third floor, which Yasha had pretty much to herself. That was obvious by the small pile of papers beside her door, almost piled into a pyramidal shape. Generally an invitation to burglars, but he had a sneaking suspicion most thieves weren't stupid enough to bust into a vamp's place. If they were, they'd never live to do it again, proving Darwinism was alive and well.  
  
The cat twined around his legs, so he gave it a final pet as he grabbed a rolled up paper off the top of the stack and stuck it under his arm, and popped a claw on one hand. The cat didn't so much dart as streak to the top of the stairs and look back at him, back half heartedly arched, more startled than genuinely frightened. "Sorry cat, but I don't have a key." He slipped his claw in the lock, and in a second the door clicked open.  
  
The cat continued to stare at him with big green eyes, until he went inside and closed the door behind him.   
  
The place smelled so much of her it made his gut hurt - or maybe that was the kerosene they called coffee fighting his healing factor and trying to eat its way clear through his stomach lining.   
  
He tossed the newspaper on the couch and let the torn envelope fall on top of the t.v., figuring he'd scour it for clues later. If there was a later, and anything worth finding.  
  
He started stripping off his wet clothes, and noticed she had a bit more furniture than the last time he was here, but not much. The heavy blue velvet curtains were already drawn against the slowly rising morning sun, so he wouldn't have to expend any energy closing them. Very good, as his blood was starting to feel like liquid metal. He hated it when he got so exhausted he really felt his second set of bones - or at least that's what he sometimes thought of them as: his internal suit of armor. If he didn't know better, he'd think sometimes his bones ached, constantly crumbling and rebuilding under the weight.   
  
Man, things were so fucked up - he was fucked up. But how could things possibly get more fucked up than they were before? That seemed like a violation of some natural law.  
  
He timed it pretty well. He kicked off his boots in the bedroom, and peeled off the last of his damp clothes before falling on the bed, too tired to bother with any formalities. He wrapped the blankets around him, shivering, wondering if Yasha had a heater (she hardly needed one - it's not like vamps cared about ambient temperature; one of the benefits of being dead), and it bothered him a little that the blankets still smelled so much of her. But at least she was alive - well, in a manner of speaking; sort of - somewhere else. Maybe he could think of it as her taking a vacation in a foreign land he could never visit - well, not without Bob's help. He couldn't say the same thing about Xia; she was gone for good.  
  
He didn't really want to sleep, but his eyes had closed of their own volition as soon as he hit the mattress. He could feel the rising tide of weariness, and knew he just didn't have the strength to fight it anymore. He was a wuss.  
  
He just hoped he didn't dream this time.  
  
2  
  
"What aren't you telling me?" Helga asked, crumpling her beer can in her fist.  
  
"What, darlin'?" He asked, as he put the finishing touches on the cake. Marzipan platypuses were even hard for him to make, which had to mean something. Personally, the fruit bat he made was his favorite, but he didn't know if Syd was into bats, per se.  
  
"Okay, so there was a dimensional disruption that got Nebbish released from his cage, and he exploited the followers of Argus to increase the chaos flux. Have I got this right so far?"  
  
"Indeedy." Sadly, he knew where she was going with this, so his mind raced for an excuse while he finished positioning the marzipan animals on the red field of strawberry frosting. Real frosting he whipped up too, not that artificial crap in a can; he thought the seeds he couldn't quite strain out gave it a lovely textured pattern. He also knew he probably enjoyed making these elaborate birthday cakes more than his great grandkids enjoyed them, but he didn't actually care about that; even if he just ended up tossing it is a wastebasket he would still do it. He was a great believer in the thought counting. (Although, if the past could be counted on to repeat itself, most of the cake would be eaten by the adults before Syd got a piece.)  
  
"So Kalfu and Irish McCallahan both worked on using the chaos wave for their own ends? Okay, so … how did they all know to strike together? I mean, Nebbish had no contact with anyone, did he? And I can't see Erish-tible and Kalfutz getting on a party line to each other."  
  
He sighed as he put the lid on the cake carrier and put it in the refrigerator to set up, as she tossed her can in the recycling bin, making a loud clatter among the cans. "Well, okay, obviously there was someone behind the scenes orchestrating this."  
  
"Who?"  
  
"Someone who could benefit from all the chaos, death, and destruction, yet was too afraid to get their hands dirty lest it all go straight into the crapper."  
  
"So a weasel god?"  
  
"Yep. "  
  
"Does that narrow things down at all?"  
  
"Nope." He grabbed a bottled lemonade tea from the fridge and went to the living room, Hel following as she continued.  
  
"So it's a huge list. How big is the list of people you can eliminate as suspects?"  
  
"Umm … " he threw himself down on the sofa, still thinking. How much should he tell her? Mr. Bungle played faintly on the stereo, almost mockingly, "Save me, the heavens have opened, the storm is over, so let's start the parade …" " I do believe they can fit on a single index card."  
  
Helga made a noise of disgust, and flopped down in the nearest armchair. "Is there any way to narrow it down further? Why wouldn't they jump in and get involved themselves?"  
  
"Well .." he left it hanging, because again, he didn't want to answer that honestly. He had his suspects narrowed down to a greater degree, but she didn't need to get involved. It was better she didn't.  
  
Sadly, Helga was just too clever. "Holy shit," she gasped. "Someone not powerful enough to compete."  
  
"Or at least not powerful in the same sense that Neb, Ereshkigal, and Kalfu were, no. Someone with a niche power."  
  
She arched a jade eyebrow at him, and sat forward, resting her elbows on her knees. "You know, don't you?" She reached across the gap between them and slapped his leg. "Spill it, ya old bastard."  
  
"I do not know," he lied. " I haven't completely narrowed down the list to one."  
  
And it was then a grenade exploded in his head.  
  
Or at least it felt like it. The bottle of tea slipped from his hand and thudded on the carpet as he winced and grabbed his head, the pain like a living blue wildfire in his mind. "Bob," she asked, concerned. "What is-"  
  
"Nothing," he said, making it a push. "Nothing's wrong."  
  
He heard her sit back, and go on as if he hadn't just had a type of seizure. "Why are you trying to hide it from me? Who do you think is -"  
  
He tuned her out, not because he wanted to, but because the pain was impossible to fight. It took him a moment to realize what it was, because he hadn't felt it for such a long time - a call from the Powers. They wanted to see him, and right goddamn now, or his head might actually explode.   
  
The pain increased every few seconds, a bright blue light pulsing behind his eyes, so he couldn't ignore it. "Hon, go," he said through gritted teeth. It hurt to push right now, but he had no choice; he had to get Hel out of here. "Go out clubbing, have a good time, don't worry about me. Go now."  
  
Blank faced, Helga just got up and left, and he didn't wait for the front door to finish closing before he teleported upstairs, to the outside of the door that didn't exist to anyone but him. He didn't shed his corporeal form this time; he was brutally pulled out of it, and yanked through the door of unreality, into the strata of reality belonging to the Powers That Be.  
  
*What the fuck was the big friggin' deal?* He thought irritably, surprised to find that the Powers had decided on a reality surface this time. It was space; just blackness, with a smattering of faint, pale stars. It looked as cold and empty as it would have felt, if he hadn't left his body back several planes below.  
  
*Imperfect one,* A voice boomed, both male and female, singular and plural; nowhere and everywhere. *You broke our rule.*  
  
That was a shock. *Can you be more specific?* He'd taken out many of their rules; that's why he was booted from the club. Bob decided to take on the form of an asteroid, or perhaps a small rogue moon.  
  
*You killed one of us.*  
  
*Bullshit! I did no such thing!*  
  
*The half-breed.*  
  
Oh, shit. *Only half you; doesn't count.* Okay, he was reaching, but he still felt it was a valid point.   
  
*It wasn't you.* Voice one said.  
  
*It was the Human.* Voice two said.  
  
*Touch him and die.* He didn't like what he thought was the drift of their thoughts. *Without my power he couldn't have hurt him at all. The responsibility belongs to me, not my avatar. He's just a puppet. Leave him out of this.*  
  
One of those long pauses, meant only to torment him. Wow, it really was quiet in space, wasn't it? Finally, voice one thought *You protect him.*  
  
*Yeah. Funny; I get attached to Humans.*  
  
*Is he one of Yours?* Voice two inquired.  
  
*How can you even think that? He's Human.*  
  
*You've hid them from us before.*  
  
*He is a perfect vessel for you.*  
  
*Coincidence. You know how entropy runs on that plane. Or have you forgotten Angel?* He got a sense of resentment from the surrounding space, not so much hatred or displeasure as simple distaste, and the overwhelming need to teach him a lesson. Logan was not going to be that lesson, no matter what noose he had to tighten around his own neck.   
  
He felt the cold spike along his non-existent spine. *The Dead One.*  
  
*You took him from us.*  
  
Good - now they could hate him for something else. *He's back now, good as new. No harm, no foul. He was just a loaner.*  
  
*You exist as you do at our sufferance.*  
  
*The fucking world was coming to an end! Weren't you paying attention?!*  
  
*It wouldn't have succeeded.*  
  
It was the feeling he got when they said it that made him pause. *Because I was there to stop it. Oh, you little creeps …*  
  
*You were irrelevant.*  
  
*Oh, eat me! You expected me to shut it down! And if I fucked up, you had a reason to exile me elsewhere. Why can't you be honest and just have me whacked?*  
  
There was another long pause, like a whisper between stars. *Your feelings are clear; your words are not.*  
  
*Welcome to Earth.*  
  
Another pause, rife with disapproval. *Being obtuse won't help you.*  
  
*Oh, you'd be surprised. So what am I here for? You could have lectured me in a dream.*  
  
Of course they made him wait for it. You know, with nothing interesting to look at or hear, space alone could be pretty boring. He should have brought a book. Finally, they told him, *You will be judged.*  
  
That didn't sound good. Wasn't that how he ended up Belial? He couldn't precisely remember. *Which means what? Are you exiling me elsewhere? Are you gonna make me a rhino?*  
  
*Once we have judged, we will determine what is to be done with you.*  
  
No, that didn't sound any better. *I don't suppose I can bring in a lawyer, huh?*  
  
Dead silence. Man, they had no sense of humor at all, did they?  
  
So Bob floated along, trying to be as carefree as an asteroid (not that they would be carefree - again, hard to think like a non-sentient, inanimate object, because they didn't think at all), and decided not to worry about it. Either he would weasel his way out of this, or he'd end up a burp frog in the seventeenth dimension.  
  
Seriously, he'd had worse. 


	2. Part 2

3  
  
It started like so many dreams: in complete and absolute darkness.  
  
He had a sense of others, of being very far from alone while still being isolated somehow, and his vision didn't so much focus as come in slowly, like light from distant stars. It was gray and watery, like looking through a badly scratched and distorted funhouse mirror, rendering the shapes above him little more than suggestions of fleshy blobs. There were voices, but he couldn't understand what they were saying. One voice was male, and familiar enough that it triggered something like an itch in the back of his mind, far from pleasant. There was a woman's voice too, one that made his heart hurt, but the words of both were stretched out, the syllables chopped up and distorted even more than the visuals. His body felt numb and cold, a thing more than a living object.  
  
Then he understood several things simultaneously. One, he was looking up through water; two, the female voice belonged to Xia; third, there was some feeling creeping into him, slowly but surely - the burn of healing, all over his body, so overwhelming it seemed equally painful and pleasurable, overloading his neurons.   
  
And he didn't want to be here. He didn't want to know this.  
  
Logan woke up with the slightest jolt, briefly unsure where he was. But the smell of Yasha brought it all back to him, and his heart rate started to inch downward, from panicked to just disoriented. He was warmer than before, and he had to take a piss so badly his kidneys hurt. He could see a sliver of light bleeding between the drawn curtains, as pink as blood diluted water. He got up just in time for a sunrise?  
  
He stumbled off to the bathroom to have a piss, and noticed Yasha had a new shower curtain up; it was clear plastic, covered with a repeating pattern of red rubber ducks with devil horns. Well. At least some vampires had a sense of humor.  
  
He also looked in her medicine cabinet for a razor (did vampires need to shave? Now there was something he should have asked…) and maybe some mouthwash to get this awful coffee aftertaste, and was surprised to find several prescription bottles. None were in her name (unless they were aliases), but they were all various kinds of painkillers: vicodin, darvocet, codeine, demerol. Why would she have these? Did they even work on vampires? Maybe these were her poisons of choice; not booze, pills.   
  
But he would smell the chemical changes in her blood … if the changes were the same in a vampire. Great - all he had were questions without answers. Maybe she only used them when he wasn't around, or maybe if she got hurt. But, again, that would depend on them working on her, and her being in pain long enough to need relief. He wondered if he called Angel and asked him these things, he'd think he was insane. Well, insane-r.  
  
After wondering if any of these things would work on him, he closed the cabinet and decided to forget about a shave. If she had a beer in the fridge, that would take care of the bad taste in his mouth.   
  
Even though he knew damn well vampires didn't really eat (well, not solid food), she had some food in the cupboards: a box of cranberry almond cereal, a can of pepper steak soup (was there a joke in having steak up in the cupboard?), a bag of organic cheese puffs, some instant miso and cellophane noodles in a Styrofoam bowl. He had some of the cereal dry, and looked in the refrigerator, which was empty save for a couple of beers, a bottle of wine, a thermos full of blood (smelled like cow), and a lone can of pineapple soda (he had no idea such a thing existed). As he took a beer and went into the living room, it reminded him of his early days, scrounging for food in other people's homes. It seemed like another life, and in a way, he supposed it was. He was so insane back then he could barely remember it anymore; it was like the shards of someone else's memory.  
  
For a change of pace, he opened the curtains, exposing her great view of the harbor. The crimson sun made the shimmering water look like a vast pool of blood. How often did you get a red sky in the morning? He hadn't smelled a storm.  
  
To confirm his suspicion, he picked the remote off the coffee table and turned on the set - yep, it wasn't morning, it was night. And not Monday night, but Tuesday night. He'd slept almost two days. No wonder he had to pee.  
  
He muted the set and left it on a weather channel (woo! He knew the exact temperature in Medicine Hat! Thank god for cable !), while he opened the newspaper and scanned it while he washed the dry cereal down with beer. It really didn't taste that bad, separately or together.  
  
This wasn't today's - er, two day's ago's - paper, but the Thursday before that. Nothing on the end of the world - funny that. The news still struck him as déjà vu, but he didn't worry about it, because the news was traditionally the same damn thing over and over again; only the names and places changed.   
  
Hey, B.C. finally had a serial killer - they must have felt so proud; finally competing on American turf. That was the thing - people themselves never changed. That's why he felt Xavier's dream was nice, but slightly unrealistic; people weren't just going to accept living peacefully with things different from them. The races could barely co-exist, and you could never bring religion or lack thereof into it. It was a nightmare of difficulties, one after another, and he wondered if Chuck had actually sat down and looked at all of the potentialities. Not that fruitcake Magneto was right; the truth was probably right in the middle, which is where it usually was.   
  
He looked between the t.v. and the paper, eyes scudding over both as if they were water, eating handfuls of cereal between gulps of beer, and suddenly that sense of déjà vu hit him like a lightning bolt between the eyes. He caught a familiar name in the paper. It felt like a cold metal claw gripped his gut, and he temporarily abandoned his breakfast.  
  
Looking back, he found it in an article about the two month old search for a cop killer. The main suspect was found several days later, dead from an apparent drug overdose, and considered the condition of the corpse, he had been dead for at least two days before the murder. The cops still thought it was tied to the suspect, somehow, but were "pursuing some leads", which Logan knew was code for saying "Fuck if we know".   
  
And he knew these names. They weren't that common, and he recognized the small mugshot of the prime suspect. Shit.   
  
The article mentioned a cemetery, and he knew he had to go. He didn't want to, but he had to.  
  
He owed it to someone.  
  
***  
  
16 Years Ago  
  
He finally decided to simply cover the mirrors.  
  
At first, he broke them. The very first time he saw one, he thought it was another person; he didn't recognize the wild eyed savage staring back at him, so he followed his instinct - the only thing functioning properly - and punched him. The mirror didn't break more than it exploded, shredding his hand. But it healed fast; he watched the skin knit itself back together with vaguely horrified fascination. He was pretty sure it wasn't supposed to do that, but he wasn't sure why.  
  
He was not sure of a lot, actually. He was roughly certain his name was Logan, and that he had been hurt, and there were people after him, people who wanted to hurt him even more … but that was it. Everything else was a jumble of instinct and need, fear and rage. He had feelings he couldn't explain: for instance, he was pretty sure there was something fundamentally wrong with him. Not only because his skin seemed to move, but also because his brain … well, it was broken. He didn't know how, or why, but he knew it didn't work right. He should know more than he did; he should be able to think coherently. But he wasn't even sure he knew how to speak. It eventually occurred to him to try, but he didn't know what to say, so he didn't think about it.  
  
He thought he was better than he had been, but wasn't sure how he came to that conclusion. When he first broke into a cabin, it was because he was, quite literally, without anything. The truck he'd taken from the scene of the explosion (was it an explosion?) eventually died as the snow started to pile up, and he was forced to abandoned it. Being naked and injured - well, he assumed he was injured; there was blood - he had to get inside, and when he found a cabin that had been abandoned for some time, it seemed like an omen. None of the clothes he found fit, exactly, but he made do; he made do with the dried food he found in the larder as well. He felt like he was starting to get better in some way, but not enough.  
  
At least he finally stopped himself from sleeping under the beds. At first he did; he felt he needed to hide, so he took blankets from the closet and crawled under the bed like a dog. It wasn't all that comfortable, but he felt better. Eventually he took to covering mirrors instead of breaking them, and started sleeping on couches, or, at the very least, on a nice carpet. Maybe one of these days, he'll be able to glance at himself without getting freaked out by what he saw. He wasn't sure what the problem was, except he couldn't recognize himself; and sometimes he would swear his eyes changed color.  
  
He avoided using the electricity, as he knew that could identify the cabin in use, if it was even still connected - he never tried anything to see. He avoided what he knew to be computers, because he had a feeling they could track him that way, whoever "they" were. Sometimes it occurred to him there might not be a "they".  
  
Although he avoided windows (no one could see him), when it was daylight he would read. It seemed to take him a little bit before all the words made sense, but he learned he was somewhere called Alberta thanks to a "newspaper" he found in one cabin, and he learned that a lot of people didn't get along very well. That was no surprise.  
  
He knew he eventually needed to find some mode of transport and get farther away than slogging through snow could ever get him. But all he could think in was vague terms; far, away, out. He had at least adapted to his senses, but that was here. What if they flared up wherever he went, where there were more people?  
  
At first, sounds and smells were so sharp they were painful, and the glare of moonlight off snow was blinding, like salt rubbed in his eyes. He somehow adjusted, but what if it happened again, what if it always happened whenever his environment changed?  
  
How could he live like that?  
  
He decided it was another thing he couldn't worry about. He had too much on his plate, too much shit he didn't understand, and he knew he had to prioritize his problems. He didn't know exactly how to do that, but it sounded good.  
  
He had been reading a collection of Raymond Chandler mysteries - he found he liked mysteries a lot more than other things - when he dozed off for a bit. He wasn't eating enough, he knew that, and he felt dehydrated, but he didn't think it was serious; he didn't think anything with him was very serious. He could get hurt, but it didn't stick. It was just another thing that was wrong with him.  
  
Something woke him up, something that caused adrenaline to dump into his system by the truckload. Heart thudding desperately, he sat up slowly, putting the book down on the floor, and realized the hum of a distant engine, too faint to be a car or a truck; more like a snowmobile. He couldn't hear it anymore, but his acute hearing allowed him to hear the crunching of footsteps through snow. Oh shit.  
  
The knock on the kitchen door sounded explosively loud, and he had to bite his own tongue to keep from crying out. "Hello?" A woman's voice called out. "I know someone's here - I can still see your footprints."  
  
The fact that it was a woman made him breathe a little easier, although it did occur to him "they" could be women too. In fact, it was really the women he had to look out for, because he had another groundless feeling that they were always the ones to get to him.   
  
She had to be bluffing about the footsteps; it snowed pretty heavily last night. He considered just laying back down on the couch, out of sight of the window, and just letting her stay out there until she decided no one was here and left. But he heard her stamping her feet, as if trying to keep warm, and she said, "Come on, give me a break, I'm freezing my ass off here."  
  
It then occurred to him: what if she was in some kind of trouble? Could he, in good conscience, leave her out to freeze?  
  
Yes. No. He didn't know. He was afraid to encounter anyone; he didn't think he was prepared. But as scared as he was, some impulse made him get him and go out to the kitchen, even though he paused with his hand on the ice cold knob. If he concentrated, he could hear her breathing out there, hear her heartbeat, smell her skin, and he felt like he was having a heart attack. He couldn't do this; he was not a person, not like them, and he couldn't be among them. He was not like them; they would hurt him.  
  
But somehow he opened the door, and wished he hadn't.  
  
He let in a blast of cold air, sharp with the promise of soon to fall snow, and the warm, comforting scent of clean female flesh. She looked in at him with bright eyes, snow making the wide brim of her hat look like it was frosted. "Hi there. Sorry to disturb you. Mind if I come in? We gotta big blast of Yukon air comin' in." She didn't wait for his answer; she pushed open the door, gently but firmly, and he stepped back, stomach knotting in fear, anxiety, and rage.  
  
As she stepped into the kitchen, shaking the snow off her hat before closing the door, he recognized her outfit. Dark blue parka with patches; dark blue pants with a red stripe down the side; the strangely masculine wide brimmed hat. She was a cop. He had let in a fucking cop.  
  
"I'm Sergeant Lily Whitewolf, with the B.C.P.D.," she said, with a sort of lightness that belied the doom of her statement. "Don't worry, hon, I'm not here for you."  
  
"Huh?" It was almost a word, and it startled him that it came out of his mouth. He didn't back up, but he did make sure that the flimsy kitchen table was between them.   
  
She was a fine boned woman with skin the color of tanned hide, and sleek black hair held back in a ponytail at the nape of her neck. In spite of her dark coloring, she had greenish-gold eyes that were surprisingly pale, and he found himself thinking that she was one of those European-Indian descendants, probably of Huron descent on one side of her family tree. But he didn't know why he thought that - and what was a Huron anyways? "I come in peace, I promise you. But aren't you cold? You don't have the heater on in here."  
  
" 'm okay," he said, surprised to find he could in fact talk. His voice sounded weird to his own ears, and way too loud, but she leaned forward slightly, as if straining to hear him.  
  
"Well, yeah. How many layers of clothes are you wearing there? Three, four?"  
  
"B.C.?" He was pretty sure "PD" meant police department, but he didn't get the first part.  
  
She rolled her Indo-European eyes, and said, "Bear Creek. Our area is pretty much from this section of the Alberta border to Banft, which means all twenty three people." She grinned at her own joke, revealing white teeth. "But it sounds better when I say B.C. , doesn't it?"  
  
He continued to stare blankly at her, not sure what she wanted. Her posture wasn't hostile, and her tone of voice was calm and almost insanely cheerful, as if he was a scared animal she was trying to keep from running away. Was he? Was the fear showing on his face?  
  
She must have figured out what he was thinking by the look on his face, or by the drawn out silence, because she sobered, and quickly said, "Look, someone's been busting into cabins all along the range, and I heard about it from some of my counterparts over the border, and decided to look into it."  
  
"Border?" He wasn't following her, but he thought it was because his mind was broken. Maybe if it worked properly, he would have known what was going on.  
  
"Alberta border." Her eyes were steady, and not unkind, but he still felt like her eyes were boring straight into his. "Do you know where you are?"  
  
It was a trick question, whether she knew it or not. Mentally, he was flailing, and had no idea what he should do.  
  
He could take her; she wasn't big, and even if she was … what could take him? She had a gun, he could smell the gun oil, but he couldn't see where it was. Her parka was zipped up, puffing out her torso like a marshmallow - if her gun was beneath her coat, she could never reach it in time. Even if she could, he didn't think it could hurt him.   
  
Her look softened, and she said, "The guy busting into the cabins … he's not a thief. There were computers, DVDs, electronic equipment - hell, there was a cashbox in one of the cabins, holding three thousand dollars U.S. - and the guy didn't touch any of it. For unclear reasons, some mirrors got broken, but otherwise the guy just seemed to take food and clothes, that's it. No one in 'Berta is hot to press charges, and certainly I'm not gonna. I mean, it's pretty clear the guy is homeless, just tryin' to survive one of the worst late season cold snaps we've had in a dog's age. No one begrudges a man tryin' to get by."  
  
Did he believe her? Could he believe her? She was a cop, and the thought seemed to leave a bad taste in his mouth.  
  
As if she knew he was on the fence, she added, "There's a distinction between thievery and survival."  
  
Surprising himself, he muttered, "Cops don't make that distinction." Was that true? Why did he believe that?  
  
"I do," she replied simply, and he didn't think she was lying; she saw no signs of it. (What signs?) She gestured to the door, and the sudden movement made him jump back a step, tensing, ready to fight. His hands itched, but he tried to ignore it -  
  
(- hands, hands, there was something wrong with his hands. He didn't know what, but sometimes when he looked at them, his stomach turned; he almost choked on the fear, revulsion, hatred. He could see them covered with blood too … not his blood, and a smell … like chemicals; burned flesh and slagged metal. He couldn't think about it; he didn't want to think about it, ever. There was something hideously wrong with his damned hands - )  
  
She froze, and the look in her eyes seemed to say "Okay, you're crazy and dangerous," but to her credit he didn't smell fear. Maybe she knew you couldn't show a dog fear or he'd attack. "I was just gonna suggest we go down to the overpass and get some coffee. Dana's got a nice set up there, and some pretty good food for someone who waits for people to get snowed in. So why don't we go, huh? I ain't gonna arrest you or throw you out on a night like this. And it's so bloody in cold in here you might like some warmth for a change. Your lips are starting to go bluish."  
  
Were they? They couldn't be - he was much warmer than he had been. But then again, he'd been out in the snow with wet clothes; just about anything would be better. And not too long ago - was it? - he woke up naked in a snow bank, and just about everything was warmer than that.  
  
(Metal froze to his skin, and there was blood all around him. He should have been dead; he should have had lost his limbs to frostbite. Why wasn't he dead? What was so fucking wrong with him that they could bleed him and break his mind and freeze him like a fucking side of beef, and he wouldn't die?)  
  
He was waiting for her scent to change, for her to move, to flinch, to go for her radio or her gun. But even in his schizophrenic state of reserved panic, a little voice in the back of his mind was spewing out facts: she was alone; he smelled no one outside. She came up on a modified Sno-Cat, which was in no way a vehicle meant for hostile restraint and transport; she knocked on the door and announced herself. If she really wanted to drop him she could have come in with her gun drawn - he hadn't locked the door. Why would he lock the door of a home he had broken into? (It wasn't like any lock would hold them back.) All evidence pointed to her being truthful - she meant him no harm. And even if there was an armed squadron waiting down at the base of the mountain, he couldn't believe they were capable of harming him.  
  
(Was anything capable of harming him?)  
  
Her expression remained guileless, and she slowly lowered her hand to her side. "C'mon, let's have a truce before that Arctic front hits and buries us in the white stuff."  
  
He continued to stare at her, sure she meant him no harm, and yet it made no sense to him. His fractured mind couldn't quite wrap around it. "Why?" he asked, unaware he had said it aloud until he heard a man speak.  
  
Her eyes remained kind, and he knew then she had a lot of experience working with crazies like him, but had yet to get jaded by it; she still had some sympathy for the addle brained losers that crossed her path. "'Cause I wanna hear your story."  
  
He wanted to hear his story too. He wondered what it was.  
  
4  
  
British Columbia - Present Day  
  
He knew it wasn't necessarily wise to enter a cemetery near nightfall, but if any vamps were stupid enough to decide he was a meal on the hoof, they deserved their brutal dusting.   
  
It was a humble and almost homely little place, with gently sloping hills of green leading to a rather large and ornate style chapel/funeral home, shaded by huge lodge pole pines and elegant weeping willows that leant a somber air of dignity to it all.  
  
But since it was after hours, Logan had to jump the fence.  
  
No problem at all, as the fence - while high - was wrought iron and more ornamental than anything, and it was just entering twilight, when the last of the red faded from the sky, only to be replaced by a dark purple that shaded to complete black, and held that way long before the stars bothered to start showing their light. The vampires probably wouldn't be out for another thirty five minutes or so, so if he wanted a fight, he'd have to loiter. Right now, all he could smell was leaf mold and fertilizer.  
  
There was nothing ostentatious about this cemetery; most of the headstones and plaques were low and granite, with the occasional small plastic vase holding flowers (real or plastic as well) or teddy bear on a child's grave. Save for the chapel, this place was tasteful and low key, and he thought it was perfect.   
  
But how fucking presumptuous of him. Like he knew anything about her. He just thought he did, and from what? Half formed memories of a brief moment from another life; fragments of reminiscence from a madman. And that's what he was - he didn't kid himself. He wasn't even sure he was sane now, just not as completely bugfuck as he was before. He supposed he would always be a little nuts, if only because a nickname like Wolverine pretty much demanded it of you. And then there was all that telepathic cluster fucking; he wondered if he'd ever get beyond that, at least on a physical level. Maybe someday most of his brain would heal up - but never all. He tried very hard not to kid himself about that. He would always have holes in the walls of his mind, things, ideas, memories, people and places gone for good. Perhaps it was for the best.  
  
Even in the half light of encroaching night, he was able to easily skim for names, and found hers near the northeast corner, in the shade of a large black walnut tree. Its lower branches sagged down, as if trying to hide the area, and he supposed that was right. It looked well tended, and there were no hints of weeds like some of the older plots had, but then again, she was under a black walnut; their roots released a toxin that had a tendency to kill other plants that tried to compete with them for food.  
  
Fuck, he knew that off the top of his head? Shit, maybe he was an actual mountain man at some point. Might explain quite a bit, especially the lingering insanity.  
  
He knelt down, and wondered if he should have brought something, just out of respect. But what? He knew, if she were here right now, she probably wouldn't even remember him - he was just one of the many nut jobs she must have encountered in her life.  
  
Unless she mentioned … oh, what the hell was the name of that guy? It was in the paper: Lee Stoff. What a fucking silly name too. You'd think a little psycho bitch like that would have a more macho name.  
  
He wondered about finding out who killed her, if indeed he could, but why would he think he could do a better job than the cops? It was two months ago, the scenes were cold, and his first thought was Stoff, who had to go and do a fucking pampered rock star heroin o.d. on them right before it went down. Quite a coincidence, wasn't it?  
  
(He hadn't been alone that night. They thought they got them all, and only Stoff slipped the noose. What if they had both been wrong? What if someone else survived?)  
  
He heard the crunch of dead leaves, and the wind shifted enough that he could smell the man on the wind. Logan wasn't all that surprised, and didn't bother to shift position. Let the man think he had him by surprise. Maybe he deserved that much.  
  
"I knew if I staked this area out long enough, you'd show up," he said coldly.  
  
"You're doin' this on your own time," Logan said, slowly getting to his feet. He brushed dirt and wet leaves off the knees of his jeans. "No police outfit would okay the stakeout of an officer's grave for two months."  
  
"Oh, so you've gotten to know police procedures over the years, huh? Do you know your own name now too?"  
  
He turned to face the police detective - was he still a detective? - and glared at him, any pity for him cut away by that sarcastic remark. The cop was still tall and long limbed, but had put on a couple of extra pounds over the years, making his sharp face fill out a bit. His hair had only thinned a little, but was now mostly a color best described as "Magneto silver". Upon seeing him, the cop's mud brown eyes widened, and his Dudley Do-Right jaw slackened a tad. "My god," he gasped. "You haven't aged a single fucking day."  
  
Logan scowled and looked away. He knew most people would be flattered to hear that, but it was just another reminder of how inhuman he was. Why didn't they just point and shriek to alert the others, like in 'Invasion of The Body Snatchers' ? "What happened to her?" He asked, taking in a subtle glance of the cemetery. Alone; it was just him and the cop. And he had a feeling none of this was police sanctioned in the least; this was personal business, not professional.  
  
The cop scoffed. "What happened? What always happened to her. She tried to help some fucking lowlife scumbag, and it blew back in her face. But this time it killed her."  
  
Logan met his hard stare with one of his own. While he knew he probably was a lowlife scumbag, he didn't like being called one.   
  
"Two months ago I was in New York. But you know damn well I didn't do this."  
  
"Do I?" He took a threatening step forward, his London Fog overcoat slapping at his ankles, but Logan stood his ground and waited. He didn't like the guy, but he didn't blame him. Logan barely knew her at all, but it was more than possible this Dudley Do-Right had loved her. "Physically, no, I don't think you murdered her with your bare hands. But you know as well as I do you are in some way responsible - that's why you're here, isn't it? Guilt?" He let the cop grab him by the collar of his leather jacket, but only because he felt kind of sorry for him. His patience and pity was quickly running out, especially seeing close up the hatred in his eyes. "You know this is connected to Stoff, and what happened. So, mystery man, why don't you tell me what the fuck happened that night, and who the fuck you work for, before I crack your fucking skull open and dump you in the first open grave I see?" 


	3. Part 3

Logan removed the cop's hands from his jacket. "That's not going to happen."  
  
The cop yanked his hands away as if his very touch was diseased. "You think I won't?"  
  
"I think you'd try."  
  
They just glared at each for a long moment, a nice macho trip, and Logan watched the muscles in his jaw clench and unclench as he decided how to respond to that. "Are you going to talk, or do I make this official?"  
  
"You can't make this official. You have no grounds to arrest me, and it's my guess you're not even on duty right now. And violating someone's civil rights is no way to make them talk, no matter what the feds think."  
  
"Are you trying to piss me off?"  
  
Logan sighed, not sure why they had already staked out defensive, adversarial positions. "Look, I'll make you a deal. Let's go get a beer, and I'll tell you what you think you don't know, if you tell me what happened to Lily."  
  
His eyes narrowed to hateful slits, lips twisting into a moue of disgust. "Why should I?"  
  
"Because maybe I can help you figure this out."  
  
The silence of the graveyard was absolute; he could hear the wind whisper through the leaves, making them rustle like newspapers scudding across an empty street. The cop still glared at him like a walking piece of shit, but finally said, "If there's any justice in this world, they'll come after you."  
  
Logan just shrugged. He couldn't deny that he was thinking the same thing. "Maybe, if we work together, we can make that happen."  
  
****  
  
  
  
The first thing Xavier said, when he opened his eyes, was, "Oh good, you stayed."  
  
Scott thought of two things immediately: 'Do you think I'd go?' and 'Unlike Logan'. He ultimately said neither, but enjoyed the last thought especially.   
  
Xavier was far from fully recovered, and he still looked deathly pale, but at least he was conscious and cognizant. Scott gave him the shorthand version of how the end of the world ended prematurely, how much of the mansion was damaged (and then "fixed" by witchcraft, however that worked), and who they lost. He was sorry he missed the funerals for Tom and Xia, but didn't know what to say about Yasha. "How's Logan?" He asked.  
  
Scott couldn't help but frown. How's Logan? Like he's the only one who'd ever lost anything in his life? "I wouldn't know. He did his usual thing and ran off."  
  
Xavier grimaced in sympathy. "It's been difficult for him, Scott. He just lost his daughter recently, and all of -"  
  
"Wait - his daughter? When the hell did he have a daughter?"  
  
So it was Xavier's turn to catch him up on what he had missed while he was gone. How had everyone neglected to mention that Logan had a daughter show up here - along with his vampire girlfriend - and then, after causing just enough chaos, Logan's daughter got killed right in front of him, sending him off on some sort of weird suicide/revenge mission. Scott didn't understand how that could work. "Why didn't you call me? I could have helped rescue his ugly butt."  
  
Xavier frowned and looked away, and for the first time Scott could actually see how old he was. It was weird, because he never thought about Xavier's age, and now that he appeared so frail, sitting up in a hospital bed and ashen as a sheet, he realized he was, in fact, old. His skin looked as thin as parchment, the fine lines in the corners of his eyes looked more like crow's feet than "character lines", and there was a heretofore unseen weariness in his usually intense eyes. Scott felt a cold shock as he realized the Professor - who was honestly the closest thing he had to a father - could have died while he was away. How could he have lived with himself? "We didn't save him," Xavier said, and for some reason was staring at one of the blank metal walls. Why? It wasn't like the Professor not to look him in the eye.  
  
Scott didn't scoff, but almost. "You can't tell me he saved himself, not from those people."  
  
"He -" The very fact that Xavier hesitated disturbed him profoundly. Since when did the Professor ever show any reluctance to share anything with him? He sighed heavily, as if too tired to hold it back, and said, "Jean saved him."  
  
It felt like his heart stopped, then dropped down into his stomach, which lurched at the very thought. "Jean?" He said, barely able to speak. "She … came back? She - no one - she came back for him?" He swallowed hard, not sure if he was more enraged or disappointed, not sure he wasn't going to get sick. He was just glad the visor hid the tears in his eyes.   
  
Xavier shook his head emphatically. "No, Scott, don't take it like that. He is one of us - yes, Scott, he is - and he was in great danger. She would have done the same for any of us."  
  
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, trying to swallow it all back. Logan didn't tell him. The bastard was here, and looked him in the eye, and never mentioned that he had seen Jean, that she had come back. The next time he saw that fucking bastard, he'd blast him into the next eon. How did she even know he was in trouble? And where the hell was she this time? I mean, t he world almost -"  
  
"How do you think I ended up here?" He interrupted. Then he looked at him for the first time in minutes, and raised a single pale eyebrow as something seemed to settle behind his eyes; they were almost dark with resolve. "They didn't tell you."  
  
Scott felt like he'd been punched repeatedly in the stomach by Piotr while he was metalled up. It was times like these when suicide really didn't look that bad; seemed reasonable, in fact. "She was here?"  
  
"No, I went to her. It's a long story. But we couldn't have gotten through this without Jean's help."  
  
Scott glanced down at the matte finish aluminum floor, which didn't reflect anything but vague shapes and colors, and tried very hard to blink back his tears. Jean had come back, more than once. And did she ever come to him? Did she ever appear? Did she ever even say hello? Appearing to the Professor he could understand, but Logan?  
  
He swallowed hard as he realized that Jean had probably made her choice.  
  
5  
  
Bear Creek - 16 Years Ago  
  
She wondered if she could describe someone as "uber-freaky" in a report, and not be considered unprofessional.  
  
The guy reminded her of a spooked horse. He seemed so frightened he was on the verge of jumping out of his skin, and while at first Lily thought it was because she was a cop, she was starting to think he was just afraid of people in general. She considered the possibility he was a shell shocked war vet (oh, right, it wasn't called shell shock anymore; it was called "post traumatic stress disorder". But shell shocked still seemed to describe it more succinctly ), but what war had they been in recently that might shake the guy up so bad? He sounded Canadian, not American, although he spoke so softly it was difficult to tell. Maybe he was hard of hearing, or disabled in some way. Mentally ill? Whispering so the voices in his head didn't hear him? She couldn't rule anything out at this point.  
  
Dana's place, a converted ski chalet renamed "The Last Chance Diner" (not exactly true, but that was an impression she liked to reinforce among travelers on the overpass), wasn't too busy at the moment, which was great considering how jumpy the mystery man was. There were only a couple of regulars she recognized as workers from the ski lodge up the road, and a long haul trucker who must have been responsible for the logging trailer taking up most of the heavily salted parking lot.   
  
As soon as she opened the door, facing a welcome blast of warmth and coffee scent, the guy paused and winced, and for a moment he tensed like he was about to bolt. She looked around, and tried to figure out what had gotten to him. The Formica counter and metal tables all gleamed, spotless to a fault (Dana was a neatness freak; she made Felix Unger look like a drunken frat boy), and the soothing murmur of CBC news radio was barely audible over the clink of silverware on plates and the sizzling of food on the grill in the kitchen.   
  
She knew the best way to soothe panicked people was not only to pretend that everything was normal, but also that you were in complete charge of everything. Nothing succeeded like the impression of authority. She took off her hat and brushed the snow off into the brass umbrella stand to the left of the door before walking farther inside. She didn't bother to glance back, although she knew he was still standing outside the door, letting in all the sharply cold air. He would follow or he wouldn't; she was betting the smell of actual food would get him inside. "Got a fresh pot on?" She asked Miki, who was working the counter this afternoon.  
  
Miki was a single mother in her early thirties, who had escaped a domestic violence situation way over in New Brunswick. Only Lily and the other members of the police department knew about it, because she was deathly afraid that her husband Ron would somehow find her here, in spite of distance and obscurity. It reminded her that Miki was a lot like the mystery man when she first came here; skittish and jumping at shadows. After almost a year, she seemed to be more at ease. Hopefully it wouldn't take Freaky Guy a year to get in the door - he was letting all the heat out.  
  
(She couldn't imagine him as an abuse victim, not as an adult. Starving and wearing four shirts beneath his coat, she could still tell he had a broad chest and was skinny without being scrawny, a crucial distinction; even in his current state, he probably wasn't a pushover. In fact, his fear would probably make him stronger, at least briefly. But victim of violence? In spite of your size and gender, anyone could be. Was that why he was so spooked? Something happened to him that he had yet to get past?)  
  
"Just put one on five minutes ago," Miki replied, putting a new roll of register tape in the old fashioned cash register. She then glanced up, and her gray eyes narrowed suspiciously upon seeing the Freaky Guy, her usual smile frozen on her face. "Who's your friend?" She said, striving for lightness. Miki lived in fear that Ron would send one of his "work buddies" after her, and lived in general fear of convicts as well. Ron was apparently a prison guard.  
  
"A guy who had a spot of trouble in the mountains," she said, with a lightness she had learned to fake well over the years. She looked back at him - he still hadn't committed to coming inside, and asked, "Want some coffee?"  
  
He looked at her, startled that she was talking to him, but he finally consented to come inside. "Nuh," he said, his voice pitched so low she could barely hear him. "I don't think I like it."  
  
"Wow. Well, I knew you people existed somewhere. Have any objection to orange juice?"  
  
He just stood near the door, his green eyes wide and blank. He had no idea what she was talking about. Jesus Christ, he'd never heard of orange juice? What kind of strict Amish household was he raised in?   
  
"A coffee for me and an orange juice for my friend here," she said, ignoring the odd look from Miki, who clearly didn't get why the guy didn't understand the question. Lily gestured, slowly and carefully, at the nearest empty booth, and after a moment, he seemed to understand what she meant and walked cautiously towards the booth.  
  
Correction: he didn't walk, he stalked. He kept his shoulders up and rigid, chin tucked in slightly, body tensed; he walked like a man itching for a fight. What was his story? All she could think was that he had been hurt pretty bad, but by who or what she couldn't begin to guess. Interestingly enough, he slid into the booth farthest away from the door. Didn't want his back to it?  
  
One of the locals sitting at a booth in the rear, working on his plate of steak and eggs (since breakfasts were a "specialty" of Han, the short order cook, they served them at any time when he was on shift), looked up and said, "'ey Lil, is it true what I heard happened over near Briar's Corner?" It was Roger the ski lift operator, he of blonde walrus mustache and permanently   
  
sunburned lips. Also, as usual, his ski goggles dangled from a cord around his neck, nearly getting in his brunch.   
  
She shook her head, and said, "I don't need you spreadin' rumors and scaring the tourist. It was just a car accident, Rog; a pretty messy one, but you know how bad that patch gets when the snowplow doesn't get through." Although it was true the area referred to as Briar's Corner made for a perilous driving experience, especially this time of year, she was honestly lying her fucking ass off. The impossible had finally happened; Bear Creek had finally chalked up its first homicide. A man found dead just the other night by the side of the road, half buried in snow turned red with his blood. He had been stabbed to death and left in the middle of a snow bank to die, on a night when the temperatures dropped to below zero. The coroner had found ice crystals still inside his body.  
  
There was no wallet, no identification, no murder weapon and no clue who this guy was or why or how he ended up there. If they could get a name for this John Doe, they might be able to figure out who would want to kill him. No one was missing from the ski lodges; there were no reports of missing skiers or snowboarders; no abandoned cars with unaccounted for owners had turned up. Although it would take longer to get complete confirmation, no one living in or around Bear Creek had turned up missing either. Besides, she was pretty sure she knew everyone who lived around these parts, and the guy didn't look even remotely familiar. And he wasn't dressed like a 'boarder or a skier; he was wearing lots of black and a plaid shirt, like someone who got extremely sidetracked from his job as a dockworker or safecracker. ("Ninja skier," had been Brent's wisecrack of the day.)  
  
There was no real forensic evidence to go on, either. The coroner admitted she had no idea what kind of knife was used, except it was "surgically sharp" and must have been used with great force, as the victim's ribs had been cut through without cracking or fracturing; a type of "clean cut" almost unheard of outside of an operating theater. Copies of the guy's fingerprints and post mortem mug shots had been faxed to Vancouver and Ottawa, in hopes he was a felon of some kind, in a database somewhere. But it was possible they wouldn't know for days.   
  
As she slid onto the blue vinyl bench seat, she noticed Freaky Guy had a sheen of sweat on his forehead and was loosening the collar of his overshirt, even though it looked like he shuddered. After coming in from the icebox, this place must have seemed almost unbearably hot. At least it looked like color was returning to his lips.  
  
She wondered how he had survived so long with no heat, and no fires (at least, not in any of the homes he camped in). Even wearing that many clothes, how had he not suffered hypothermia? From what the Alberta boys could tell, the bust in along the range had been happening for months, during the worst winter in recent memory. And it was estimated - if indeed he was the only guy busting into the cabins - that he had covered a good fifty miles at least, and that was only on the Alberta side. On foot. In temperatures that verged on inhuman. How in all that was fucking holy did a half-starved, freezing man manage that without ever getting caught out in a blizzard? She had already glanced at his nose, earlobes, tips of his fingers (usually the first to fall to frostbite, even from wind chill alone), and found they looked perfectly fine. His skin - well, what she could see beyond all the facial hair - was flawless; not a single sign of windburn, or even a broken blood vessel. It seemed impossible - fuck, it was impossible. Just as impossible as a man walking nearly a hundred miles in the Canadian Rockies, in the dead of winter, in borrowed clothes that didn't fit him properly, and having not a scratch to show for it. There had to be more going on than any of them realized, because, all that aside, the guy didn't appear to be the sanest man in the province. The insane weren't known for their acute survival skills.  
  
"So, what do I call you?" She asked, picking up a laminated menu. Of course, she knew it by heart, but she didn't want him to feel like she was studying him. She had a feeling he wouldn't like that. "I mean, you know my name, and I could call you "Hey you," but that seems pretty impersonal."  
  
He stared at her across the table, clearly torn about saying a single damn word. She took a second menu from the condiment stand and slid it across to him, as he watched her hand the whole time. What, did he think she was going to stab him with a fork? "You could make something up. I'd never know. I'd just like somethin' to call you."  
  
Again that look, that thousand yard stare of someone who had seen something so horrible they just checked out and left their body behind. And yet, there was something far back in his eyes, a spark of … something, something fighting to surface. He glanced down at the menu in a way that suggested he had never seen one before, and mumbled, "Logan."  
  
Now that was an odd choice. If he'd picked a bland, ordinary name like John, Ed, or Bob, she'd never have thought twice about it. But Logan? Come to think of it, he did look more like a Logan than a Pete or Jim, in as much as anyone could look like a name. Then again, what was Han's famous dessert listed on the menu? Loganberry pie. Hmm.   
  
Miki came over and gave her her mug of coffee, but put the glass of orange juice in the middle of the table, as if too afraid to get close to freaky "Logan". It was almost funny how they both eyed each other warily - which one was more afraid of the other? Seemed like a tie. "What can I get you?" Miki asked, taking a step back and fixing her gaze on her.  
  
She wasn't hungry, but she had a feeling Logan wouldn't even think to order if she didn't get something. "Just some whole wheat toast for me," she said, and glanced at Logan. Who glanced back, expression unreadable.  
  
Wow. He had no idea what was going on here, like he'd never even heard the concept of a restaurant. Seriously, was he a space alien, dropped in the middle of the Canadian wilderness, all his briefings on this odd planet forgotten on impact? It would make as much sense as anything else.  
  
(In her mind, she could hear Brent commenting, "With that hair, he'd have to be an alien. Earth gravity doesn't work like that.")  
  
"And Logan here will have one of Han's special omelets," she said, ordering for him. Han threw just about everything in his "special" omelets, so it would give Logan all the protein and vitamins he must have been missing in his diet of nothing but dried and boxed food.   
  
Miki glanced warily at Logan, who hadn't bothered to turn his curious gaze away from Lily. He didn't understand any of this, and maybe Miki was starting to get that idea. No threat to her; possibly no threat to anyone. "Okay, sure. Be right up." Miki retreated gratefully, happy to have something constructive to do.  
  
"What..?" Logan began in that soft murmur of his, but wasn't sure where to start. Maybe he had a throat injury; a sore throat?  
  
"Just got you some food, honey," she said reassuringly, unzipping her parka; now she was starting to feel too hot. "Don't worry, Han's a pretty good cook. Hell, he's as close as we have to a chef in these parts." She wrapped her hands around her coffee mug and gave him an encouraging look, so he tentatively reached out and took his glass of juice. He sniffed it, and then recoiled as if shot. Okay, sure, it was concentrate, but it was surely a top of the line brand. "So where are you from?"  
  
He shifted his startled gaze from the juice to her. She could see him flailing for an answer inside his own mind. "Alberta."  
  
"All of it? Wow," she said, with mild sarcasm. Of course it was lost on him. But her bullshit radar - something every decent cop should have - was not going off; this guy was too raw to have any kind of artifice. In fact, her space alien joke was starting to have more and more plausibility. Maybe she should call the psychiatric hospitals around here and on the Alberta side, see if they had a headcase who got away on them. "I'm from Manitoba originally myself. You can probably guess why I moved away as soon as possible."  
  
That blank and flailing green stare. "No."  
  
There was something in his naked honesty that made you want to bundle him up in a heavy coat and give him hot chocolate. He was a man who had absolutely nothing to go on, no frame of reference, and yet was still trying very hard to get along. He deserved an A for effort if nothing else. "Just a joke. There's a whole lot of nothing in Manitoba, or at least there was for me. I started off as a police officer in P.E.I, believe it or not, but after dealing with more fisherman than I ever wanted to in my life, I thought I should get away to the mountains, so I could deal with tourists and crazed loners who live by themselves in shotgun shacks, with nothing but sled dogs and conspiracy theories to keep them company." Again, a whole lot of nothing from him, just a curious quirk of an eyebrow, suggesting what he could comprehend he didn't understand. She shook her head and doffed her hat, putting it down on the seat. "I was just making a little joke. Don't worry about it."  
  
He nodded faintly, still not understanding, and turned his attention back to his juice. She watched as he seemed to study it with all the fascination of an object that just dropped burning from the sky. She said nothing, just observed from the corner of her eye (she pretended to be enthralled by the menu, so he didn't notice her scrutiny) he went through the slow motions of taking a sip of his juice, putting it down and making a face as though he were about to barf, and then reconsidering it once his eyes stopped watering.  
  
(What the fuck..? Why were his eyes watering? It was orange juice, not lemon juice ... right? Shit, she better order a glass for herself and make sure Han didn't fuck it up. It would have to be today, wouldn't it?)  
  
"Is it okay?" She asked, nodding at the juice.  
  
He continued to study it, as if afraid it would jump up and bite him. "I don't know. What ... what is it supposed to taste like?"  
  
Wow. If anyone else had said that, she'd have thought it was bullshit, but he continued to be nothing but on the surface; he had never had orange juice before. Or at least not to his knowledge. "Miki," she said. "Can I get a glass of water over here?"  
  
Miki looked like she didn't want to leave the safety of her counter, but she nodded anyways. The good thing about being a cop was you could just throw out orders, and most people obeyed without question.   
  
Logan watched suspiciously as Roger left, and Lily watched Logan. What did she have on her list: violence victim; mental case; possibly both. Another good thing a cop should have was a sense of people, a way to read their intentions, and she knew she had a pretty good one - she was even told she should go into hostage negotiation because she was so good at reading people and figuring out what they wanted to hear. (Of course she ignored that advice - where the hell was the fun in hostage negotiation? Also, not a big call for it in rural Canada.) But Logan was leaving her scrambling - she was getting no sense of him at all. He was all reaction: fear mostly, but automatic, knee jerk, as if he didn't know how else to act. He was like a blank slate.  
  
But people could not be a blank slate. They were madly complicated things, with more baggage than the Titanic. So he could only be an empty tape if he: A) suffered some kind of head trauma; B) was a complete mental case; or C) had been wiped out by some sort of massive psychic/emotional trauma. D) Alien observer who lost his notes was not a possibility she was going to entertain, amusing though it was. "Can you tell me anything about yourself?" She wondered.  
  
He shifted uncomfortably, not sure how to answer, and truth slipped out again. "No."  
  
She wished more people were as honest as he was. Just without the freakiness.  
  
Miki brought the glass of ice water over, and mistakenly put it down in front of her. She nodded her thanks and waited until she walked away before shoving the glasses over to Logan. "Maybe you'll like this better."  
  
After a single suspicious glance, he sniffed the glass, then picked it up. She watched his throat work as he gulped down the water, not even taking a breath as he drained the entire glass in three swallows. How thirsty was he? Did he even turn the taps on in the cabins - did he know what they were for?  
  
As if to prove even he hadn't known how thirsty he was, he put down the water glass and picked up the orange juice again. He seemed to hold his breath this time as he finished off the juice in a similar manner. Shit - dehydrated as well as starving?  
  
"Miki," she said, getting her attention again. "Can we have the pitcher of water?" Miki frowned, as her fear and confusion seemed to be turning to annoyance. She didn't blame her one bit. Lily prided herself on being able to solve anything, be it a crime or a person, and she could already tell Logan was going to be the challenge of her life. Well, on top of the corpse found at Briar's Corner.  
  
She suddenly wondered if there was a connection. Mystery man, mystery corpse …  
  
But the Hodge cabin was up the mountain, several miles from the crime scene. Still, if Logan could basically walk the fucking Rockies, what the hell was a few miles?   
  
She pretended to look out the window, all the while scrutinizing Logan out of the corner of her eye. The man was scared, obviously unbalanced - but a killer? 'Are you a killer, Logan?' She thought, trying to fit him into her crime scenario. 'And if I asked, what would you say?' 


	4. Part 4

Miki brought the pitcher over and refilled Logan's glass before going off to get their food; Logan waited until Miki was gone to gulp down his new glass. When she came back, she left the plates on the center of the table, trusting Lily to sort it out, so she didn't have to spend anymore time near the freaky guy. Lily pulled the saucer of toast towards herself, then nudged the omelet plate towards him.   
  
After initial wariness and sniffing (what was with the sniffing? Did he have a sinus problem?), she watched as he inhaled the omelet, hardly chewing. She pushed her saucer of toast over towards him, and dumped fake cream tubs and sugar packets in her coffee. If he was starving, shouldn't his face be sunken in more? Should he be scrawnier? He certainly shouldn't have the stamina to cover dozens of miles in thigh deep snow. If you didn't notice his empty eyes, you'd think he looked to be in far too good of shape to have been as bad off as he was. Curious.  
  
After he had completely cleaned the plate, he noticed the saucer of toast. "I don't feel like it," she told him. "And I hate for food to go to waste."  
  
He only had to consider it a moment before wolfing down the toast as well. She almost joked, "Not on Atkins, huh?" but didn't, as he wouldn't get it. She considered ordering him something else, but considering how much he'd had to eat, and the fact that he'd had an entire pitcher of water, he was risking illness later as it was. "How long has it been since you had a hot meal?" She wondered.  
  
He looked at her oddly, as if it had never occurred to him before. "I don't know."  
  
"Have you had one since winter started?"  
  
He needed a moment to process the idea of winter. "No."  
  
"What about water? How much have you had to drink?"  
  
He shrugged. "I have snow when I need it."  
  
"Snow?" She repeated, trying to grasp the concept of a man hiking through it, in thin air and killing temperatures, occasionally taking up handfuls of clean snow (at least she hoped it was clean) whenever he was thirsty. She felt cold just thinking about it. How the fuck had he done that? "Do you know how far you've traveled?"  
  
He shrugged again, and she noticed his eyes were brighter - the food was already doing him some good. "Just as far as the next cabin."  
  
Odd how he had a knack for picking cabins that hadn't been occupied in a while. She also noticed his hands were uncut, un-calloused, and wondered what he used to hit the mirrors. There was a little blood on some of the shards. Could he have kicked them with bare feet? Some were kind of high up, but it wasn't out of the realm of possibility. "You've traveled a lot more than that. Do you know how long you've been doing this?"  
  
He studied her warily, like it was a trick question. His eyes shifted to watch someone who just came in the door. "I dunno. A while."  
  
"Would a couple of months surprise you?"  
  
Again the shrug, as he poured the last of the water into his glass. "No."  
  
She wondered if he knew what the time span of a month was.  
  
The man who had just come in was trying to ask Miki a question in English that wasn't just broken, but completely shattered. He was a slender Asian man, and while she had met enough of the immigrants who washed up on Canada's shore to know the sound of the Japanese language and one variation of Chinese (apparently there were several sub-languages, possibly just to make everyone else feel stupider), she didn't recognize the dialect this man occasionally lapsed into.  
  
Her guess was he was lost, and she figured the least she could do was try and help him, even if she didn't speak the language. Han's parents were from Hong Kong. Even if he didn't speak the language, maybe he could tell her what the guy was speaking.   
  
Then the guy said something in his own language, except he seemed to be throwing his voice.  
  
Lily turned, shocked, to find it was Logan speaking.   
  
The Asian man turned, and proceeded to have a two minute conversation with Logan in the unknown language. Logan didn't have to think about the words like he had to with English; it seemed to come out with an ease suggesting it was his native tongue.  
  
The Asian man gave him a polite smile and what she assumed was a thank you, and left the diner. Everyone was now staring at Logan like a new arm had sprung from his forehead, and he seemed oblivious until he finished his water. After slowly looking around, he looked back at her. "What?"  
  
"What language was that?"  
  
He looked at her curiously. "Huh?"  
  
Lily realized he didn't know he was speaking a different language at the same time he realized he had just spoken another language, with more fluency than English. She wondered is he even knew what language it was he spoke.   
  
Logan's eyes widened, until he looked like a deer in the headlights. He tensed and bolted up, running out of the diner like his pants were on fire. She had slid out of the booth, but by that time he was a distant memory - shit, he was fast.  
  
"What the hell was that about?" Miki asked, looking wide eyed and torn between fear and irritation.  
  
Lily tried to group the evidence together in her mind. He had been living hand to mouth in cabins for months, starving, verging on dehydration, with no knowledge of who he was, and barely able to converse or get along in society. But in spite of all this, he appeared very healthy, with a stamina almost inhuman, and an apparent fluency in one Asian language, although even he wasn't sure what it was. He was also pretty damn fast. None of this added up; none of it made sense. And that didn't even include the corpse at Briar's Corner.  
  
"I don't know," she admitted. "But I intend to find out."  
  
6  
  
British Columbia - Present Day   
  
  
  
Logan watched as Detective Brent Ellison shelled peanuts and made a little pile of them on a napkin.   
  
It wasn't so much a decent bar as a sort of cigar bar, an upscale nightclub for those who made over fifty thou a year and wanted a nice, quiet place to decompress after a hard day crushing peons and running the world. He didn't think Ellison could afford to be here, so he figured there was another reason that he couldn't even begin to guess. Real fancy ass place to have peanuts in shells in the bowls.  
  
They sat in a penumbra of shadow in the back, Brent with a Scotch he had yet to drink, Logan had a pilsner glass of one of the cheaper fancy beers, half empty. He figured Ellison - was he a Detective? Did it fucking matter? - was nervous and needed something to do with his hands, so he rolled the peanuts across the polished hardwood table, cracking the shells and shedding the thin inner skin. But he had yet to eat a single one; he just denuded them, and placed them on his napkin, perhaps attempting to make a goober pyramid.  
  
"What happened to her?" Logan asked, once he was finished telling him what he wanted to hear. The place was naturally dark, but in the way that polished wood and burgundies and golds always were; the place didn't just smell, like privilege, but radiated it like radiation from a nuclear waste dump. It wasn't seedy; it was studied, a calculated pose, an attempt at fusty, upper crust coziness. And safe, he slowly realized. Anyone who saw them here wouldn't recognize either of them, and they wouldn't really care about the clearly low life scumbags. And, there was little possibility the killer would see them together.  
  
Once he was done denuding his twelfth peanut, he added it to his little sacrificial pile, and said, "It didn't make sense, you know. She wasn't on duty, she wasn't in uniform, she was just done checking her post office box at the junction. And she just collapsed - boom. The initial thought was heart attack or aneurysm, you know? But then they found blood on the back of her neck … " he paused, and using his forefinger and thumb, flicked one of the peanuts off the table. Logan heard it hit the far wall and click across the floor; it was unlikely anyone else noticed. "They found a kind of dart in the back of her neck, buried really deep, as thin as a needle. They think it was poisoned, but toxicology has been unable to identify what the hell it is."  
  
"That's too much finesse for a dumb fuck like Stoff and his crew," Logan pointed out.   
  
Ellison's blue eyes assessed him coldly. "You're a profiler now?"  
  
Logan sighed heavily, annoyed but not really wanting to get into it with him. If they were going to do this properly, they couldn't be constantly taking the piss out of each other. "I'm a low life scumbag, remember? I know how they work. Look, think about it - who the fuck would go to the trouble of learning to aim and use a fucking blow gun when you can just go over the border, pick up a nine millimeter, and bust a cap in her ass the very same day? You know as well as I do that that makes no sense. It doesn't connect to Stoff's m.o. either."  
  
"M.o.? Been watching a lot of cop shows, eh?"  
  
"Are you gonna stop that?"  
  
"What?" He sent another peanut flying.  
  
"Assume I'm an idiot. I know how I was last time … but I'm not that way anymore, okay? I've … recovered, kinda. All right?"  
  
Ellison scrutinized him, and said, "Okay - then what the fuck were you? Military intelligence? Deranged logger? And what the hell is your name anyways?"  
  
He had to ask him all the hard questions, didn't he? "I'm still Logan. But I was … yeah, I guess military intelligence - oxymoron though it is - sums it up best."  
  
The cops continued to stare right through him, like he didn't believe him. "Oh really? How come nobody ever copped to you? How come we never found anyone who recognized you or knew anything about you?"  
  
He wasn't sure how to answer that, if indeed he should. After trying to figure out a way to put it that wouldn't lead to more questions (impossible), he finally said, "I'm … the thing that shouldn't be."  
  
Ellison looked like he was about to make a snaky remark, but he thought better of it. He didn't know he was a mutant, did he? Did Lily ever tell him? His look sobered slightly, and he asked quietly, "What did they do to you?"  
  
Logan shook his head, finding it hard not to chuckle for some reason. Maybe because it would have been easier to ask what they hadn't done to him. "I don't think you'd believe me if I told you."  
  
The cop stared at him for a long moment, but shook his head and glanced away towards the bar. "Maybe I should call Monie. Let her know one of her wacky theories panned out."  
  
He had no idea who Monie was, so he didn't say anything.  
  
Ellison flicked another peanut across the floor - Logan was starting to get the idea he was just being a smart ass by messing up their pretty floor - then asked, "So what was that language you spoke?"  
  
Logan had no idea what he was talking about, but then realized he must have meant in the diner. It was so long ago he could barely remember it; it seemed like it happened to someone else. "Korean."  
  
"Why do you speak fluent Korean? Stationed there?"  
  
"I speak a lot of things of things fluently ."  
  
"Why? Were you a translator or something?"  
  
Logan shrugged. "Something like that." Possibly; it would explain a lot.  
  
"Damn. I wish you told us that years ago; I'd have won a bet."  
  
He didn't want to know, and besides, they had wandered way off topic. "Why do you think Lily's death is connected to Stoff? Poison darts was never his thing, was it?"  
  
Ellison sat back, making his padded chair creak like the timbers on a pirate ship. He reached into his coat pocket, and said, "It was what was left at the scene. There was no evidence beyond the dart in her neck, but there was her mail. It didn't appear she'd had a chance to look at it yet, so he missed his chance to rub it in." He pulled out two sheets of paper and unfolded them before sliding them across the table towards him.  
  
They were scans, pretty high quality. The first page showed the front of a postcard, from Banff National Park, showing a cabin that looked very much like the one that night, and the second sheet of paper showed what was written on the back in carefully printed script: "If you hadn't interfered then, you wouldn't be dead right now." It was signed - with obvious sarcasm - "John Doe".  
  
"Seems obvious to me," Ellison said as soon as he was sure he had read it, flicking another peanut. It sounded like it pinged off a glass, and somebody looked around that time. Ellison spread another napkin over his pile of peanuts, hiding it from view. He was a real smart ass. "I'm glad she missed it."  
  
"The card wasn't for her," he said, sliding the papers back across the table. "It was for us. They knew her routine, they planned her assassination out in advance. This was to rub our noses in it, not hers."  
  
Ellison didn't dispute that, leading Logan to believe he had come to the same conclusion. As he refolded the paper and tucked it away, Logan impatiently tapped his fingers on the table. "This still doesn't make sense - why now? And why in this way? Stoff was just a bargain basement wannabe gangster. I believe people can hold grudges this long, but it's giving him a lot of credit for organization I'm not sure he deserves, especially since the fuck died before this could go off."  
  
"His associates could have carried on with -"  
  
"What associates?" Logan interrupted. "There's a reason Stoff was the only one believed to have escaped that night. Or was there someone else? Is there something you're not telling me?"  
  
He shook his head, looking weary and defeated. In an odd way, the burnished, shadowy lighting made him look older, when most of the time it worked the opposite way. "No. All the know associates I could find were just fellow junkies and ex-cons, none with a history or an ability that would suggest this. They were mostly low level fuck ups, no violent history. When I mentioned that a cop was killed, one of 'em almost wet his pants at the idea, he was so fucking scared. He knew you got nailed to the wall for a cop killing. But it has to be connected, Logan; this has to be his doing. If not Stoff, who else? As you said yourself, he's the only one that got away."  
  
"That we know of."  
  
"There was never any evidence otherwise."  
  
Logan grunted, not finding that very convincing, but hell, what could he do? And where could he start? The only evidence they had was the dart, and that had turned out useless.  
  
Well, useless from a cop perspective. "Can you get me the dart?"  
  
Ellison's head jerked back, as if Logan had just kicked him under the table. "Whoa. That's in evidence, I can't -"  
  
"What do you mean you can't? You just told me shit no civilian should know. I can take that dart and get it analyzed by top of the line equipment; shit you cops won't have for decades. And I can get it quick too."  
  
"How?" Logan just raised an eyebrow and stared at him hard. The cop got it and rolled his eyes dramatically. "Okay, fine, you'd have to kill me if you told me, Mister Military Intelligence Man. But even if you can find out what it is, it won't be admissible as evidence in court."  
  
Logan shook his head, and couldn't suppress the smirk. "We are not having this conversation 'cause you're gonna arrest the guy who did it. Tell yourself whatever you want, but I think we both know why we're here."  
  
His expression soured, and something in it seemed on the verge of a wholesale shut down. "I'm not a vigilante."  
  
"Neither am I. But ask yourself this, Ellison - if you by some bizarre twist of fate find this guy, can you legally nail him? Unless you find the blow gun or whatever loaded with the exact same kind of dart in his possession, do you think you have any of getting him for this? It's been two months; if you guys had anything worth a shit, you should have been able to move on this by now. We are not having this conversation because you think I can help with this investigation; we are having this conversation because I'm all you've got." Ellison sat back, crossing his arms over his chest, frowning. But he had yet to deny a single thing. "Sometimes there are crimes so well financed, so well orchestrated, that they escape, that the victims fall through the cracks. And I know that 'cause I was one of them, as much as I don't like to think about it. But I can fight back for the others, and I will, because I can, and someone has to do it. If you wanna sit it out when the time comes, by all means do. Just don't get in my way."  
  
The cop studied him for a long time. "You're not really sane, are you?"  
  
He just shrugged and grabbed his beer. "I'm close enough to pass."   
  
Ellison watched him as he gulped down the rest of his drink, and then nodded, as if that was good enough. "If I can smuggle out the dart, what then?"  
  
"Just leave it to me. I'll get it back to you with analysis as soon as possible."  
  
The cop sighed and unfurled his arms, pulling the napkin off the peanuts and lining up his next target. "And this is courtesy of the military-industrial complex?"  
  
"Nope - the green stuff that really makes the world go 'round."  
  
Ellison quirked up an eyebrow at that. "You have money?"  
  
"No, but I know people who do."  
  
Logan just hoped he could live up to his promise. He supposed he could find a way, one way or another, but maybe the Ganesha fetish still had a little power left in it after all.   
  
****  
  
Scott tried to remember the last time he was this angry, and couldn't.   
  
And when was the last time he got in a big screaming fight with Ororo? He wasn't sure he ever had. But what kind of excuse was that - she didn't tell him about seeing Jean because she wasn't sure it was her? Bullshit! He was not a child, and he didn't need protection.  
  
Xavier had said something like that as well - that Jean 'wasn't herself", and seemed to go off on a "power corrupts" tangent that Scott had no patience for. Did he even hear what he was saying? He was talking about Jean like she was … like she was Bob or something, completely drunk on power. Jean wasn't like that, and he knew it; Jean could never be "corrupted by power" or whatever the hell he was going on about. Jean was the smartest woman he knew, and she was the not the type to get swept up by such things, and he couldn't believe the Professor, of all people, was suggesting she had been, or that she couldn't handle her power or emotions. It felt like betrayal. He expected it from Logan, because Logan lied as a matter of course: he didn't trust anyone, and it showed. But the Professor, Storm ..? What the hell had gotten into them? Did whatever Bob and his goddamn demonic friends did here at the mansion have side effects that he casually forgot to mention? 'Oh, by the way, everyone will lose their minds. Tough cookies, mate.'  
  
He went and beat up the heavy bag in the gym for a while, on the theory that it would make him feel better. But it didn't; all it gave him was sore arms, and a sticky, sweaty feeling down his back. Storm tried to talk to him again, but he wasn't ready to talk to her, and he made that absolutely clear. He was still so furious and …. hell, he didn't know what the other feelings were exactly, except they left him feeling vaguely ill, and wishing he could crawl out of his skin.  
  
He was tired of pacing the halls, and he was tired of being pent up in his (their) room. He figured he should go driving; sometimes driving at inadvisable speeds made him feel better, for reasons he couldn't explain. But Logan had run off with his motorcycle (again!), so he was stuck with a car, which was honestly okay - it was raining anyways. He did wonder if he should come back at all if he bothered to leave. If they were going to say such things about Jean -   
  
- (and she had dumped him) -  
  
- did he have a reason to return? Would they even want him here?  
  
He restlessly jingled his car keys in his hand as he walked down the hall towards the main service elevator, the one that would take him straight down to the garage, so he didn't have to risk falling into the Professor's sense radius (he'd already warned him he was in no mood for a discussion, telepathic or otherwise, and he seemed to be respecting that for now, but he didn't want to run the risk of new contact). He saw papers spilled on the floor, fallen off a side table, and scowled, wondering which kid had done that and not bothered to pick it up. He could have just left it for someone else to pick up … but oh damn it.  
  
Picking it up, he realized it wasn't paper but the daily mail call, and since there was so much and several slick covered magazines at the bottom of the pile (oh hey, his latest Car and Driver magazine had come in), some of the mail at the top had slid off. One of those things was a large manila envelope for Logan, and just reading the name made him sigh. Nothing that had anything to do with Logan was ever good.  
  
Well, an envelope was too small for an entire head, unless someone pounded it flat with a steamroller. Maybe someone had sent him an ear perhaps? Just a scalp? Both anger and a morbid curiosity at what horror could be lurking inside made Scott rip open the envelope and pour the contents out onto the floor.  
  
He was both surprised and disappointed to find it was only papers. But not just papers, old ones that smelled of must and age, so much so he sneezed as he crouched to gather them up. Now he felt guilty for opening Logan's mail - but how was he to know it wasn't something nasty? It was last time, wasn't it?  
  
Picking them up, he noticed the first documents he picked up were missives in a foreign language. One he recognized as French, and he was reasonably sure the other was a Norse language of some kind - Swedish, Dutch, Swiss - but he couldn't say for certain. Did Logan even know how to read Dutch? (Oh, what was he thinking? He had some kind of creepy language thing going on; maybe it was some kind of odd secondary mutation: healing factor, bad hair, complete language comprehension.)  
  
Then, picking up the last of the papers, being very careful not to tear the really fragile ones (was that Russian? Maybe he should see if Piotr could read that one … ), he noticed a photograph. It was so old it was yellowed and starting to curl at the edges, and he saw writing on the back, in English this time, but so faded it took him a moment to read it in the dim light. But it was gibberish, words that made no sense strung together as they were- Limey, Bear, Eagle, Igor, Thrush, Ace, Red, Gimp, Hornet, Lingo.  
  
He turned the photo over, and studied the picture; someone had written a faded "The End!" in the top margin of the photo. They were just men, some with strange insignias on their jackets, and there was a wanted poster displayed on the back wall of the room they were in … something about the French Resistance, if he read the large, bolded words correctly. What the hell was this? This couldn't possibly be from the '40's, could it? Had to be a joke.  
  
But while you could print photos of anyone anywhere, it was difficult to convincingly age a photograph without damaging it. Just as he was wondering why someone would send an ancient Polaroid to Logan, he noticed the man in the back, the one in the jacket with the Canadian flag on the shoulder, turning away from the camera …  
  
"Holy shit," he exclaimed, unable to keep it in. That couldn't be Logan - it couldn't be.  
  
Could it?  
  
He examined it from several angles, trying to see where it had been Photoshop-ed in, and then tried to figure out if it was just a guy who looked quite a bit like Logan; that was a possibility. Maybe Logan had an extremely older brother, or maybe - god forbid - this was his father. The hair looked a little different … a little … not all that much, really. He just didn't have the sideburns, and the "peaks" of his hair had been smooshed down a bit.   
  
Shit - this was Logan. Logan looking thirty somewhere in the 1940's. Unlike now, when he looked … well, thirty. Christ.  
  
He quickly shoved the papers back in the torn envelope, and found his anger had been forgotten for the moment.  
  
Wait until the Professor got a load of this. 


	5. Part 5

7  
  
Logan couldn't quite believe it when a limousine pulled up to the curb.  
  
Here he was, standing under the awning of a closed adult book store, catty corner to one of the few phone kiosks still in existence, on one of the seediest streets in Vancouver, and suddenly a brand new stretch limo pulls up. It was surreal.  
  
(Already he'd been asked if he wanted to buy several different varieties of drugs, and propositioned by hookers both female, male, and unclear. He told the drug dealers he was part of a police stake out, making them call him narc along with several filthy names, but they cleared off. He said the same thing to the hookers, save for one boy and one girl: the boy looked about fifteen, and smelled like a junkie. Logan gave him fifty bucks and told him to go get a decent meal - the kid didn't trust getting money for nothing, but he did take it and scurry off as if he'd mugged him. The girl was probably fourteen if not thirteen, and looked cold, scared, and high. He gave her fifty bucks and asked her to get a decent meal as well, as both had the same hungry, ravaged look he ascribed to all drug addicts or famished vampires; they seemed so evanescent they just might blow away, dissolve in the first good rain. She looked at the money suspiciously and asked him if he was one of those "god freaks". He wasn't sure how to answer that - would Bob want him preaching for him? And what would a Bob worshipper preach anyways? "Free beer!" "Everybody should just take a chill pill and relax." "Swagman's hats and feather boas for everybody!" - but he finally settled on "No". She took the money, but she kept eyeing him like he was a freak, unsteady on her high heels, her bare legs puckered with goosebumps from the cold. There were so many fucking sad stories out here it was crushing. )  
  
The hookers huddled on the street corner across the way looked on with as much shock as Logan did as a uniformed chauffer - a young woman with tufts of reddish brown hair sticking out from beneath her chauffeur's hat as she walked around the large, phallic vehicle, and opened the rear door for him. At this point, some of the hookers were jeering, "Hey, pick me! " "Are you into bears? I could wear a wig!" and cracking themselves up with laughter.   
  
Inside the limo, Toshiro "Tony" Tagawa waved at him playfully, undoing the tie around his neck. "Are you looking for a good time?" He wondered, grinning at his own joke. Even the chauffer tittered as Logan scowled, and got inside the limo.   
  
The driver shut the door after him, and went around to the front, although Logan was hard pressed to tell: the windows were tinted a smoky black, and the interior was a rich, soothing royal blue, and real leather by the smell, that seemed to absorb noise like a supernatural force. "When ya said you'd have someone come pick me up, I thought you meant a lackey."  
  
"Lackey?" Tagawa repeated, clearly amused. "I don't have lackeys, Logan-san, simply employees. And I was done with a charity function, so why not come get you myself?" There was a small television screen embedded in the seat back, which was an easy eight feet away, and it was currently showing a Simpsons episode.   
  
"That why you're wearing a tux?" He asked, even though he knew that was why. "I thought maybe you were just wildly formal."  
  
Tagawa chuckled good naturedly, opening a panel in the seatback before them - it contained a very mini bar. "I hate the penguin suit. I also prefer to give to charity anonymously, but this group insisted on giving me some kind of award." He took out an airplane sized bottle of liquor, and asked, "Do you think they'd accept the money if they knew much of it sprung from my family's fortune of blood money? I know my money to be honest, but theirs …"  
  
"Look, if it's gonna keep food on the table or keep 'em from freezing to death, I think most people aren't too concerned about the moral underpinnings of the cash that could save their lives."  
  
Tagawa considered that a moment, then nodded. "Very true. You are wise for someone so young."  
  
"I'm not that young. Or wise." He watched as Tagawa selected a mini bottle from the collection, and tried to figure out what he had in there.  
  
Tagawa must have noticed, because he asked, "Would you like a drink?"  
  
"Got a real tiny bottle of beer in there?"  
  
Tagawa chuckled again, and it was easy to see the laugh lines on his narrow face. He laughed a lot, but that was hardly a surprise; he seemed so pleasant and easy going it was hard to imagine him ever getting angry. "All I have are what I've been told is "children's drinks" - liqueurs. I can't help it; I've never liked beer, or even sake. Love crème de menthe, though." He held up the tiny green bottle for emphasis. "It tastes like melted ice cream, and yet still gets you comfortably numb."  
  
Logan smiled, surprised that a guy in his sixties would reference a Pink Floyd song - but why the hell not? They had to be nearing sixty themselves. "I bet it does. I kinda avoid strong mints, 'cause … well, sometimes the taste is too much, ya know?"  
  
Although he didn't understand, he nodded, which was polite of him. "So what did you wish to ask me? If it was simply for the lift, it's my pleasure."  
  
"No. I realize your business doesn't exactly put you in contact with top drawer forensic labs, but do you think you might be able to put in some calls? I have something … unusual that needs to be analyzed as soon as possible. Something special."  
  
Tagawa took a pull from the tiny bottle - the fact that he didn't use a glass was something Logan found kind of cool - and paused before answering. "I know people, yes. What is it you need exactly?"  
  
Logan pulled the sealed plastic evidence bag from his coat pocket, and held it out so he could see the slender, bloody dart inside it. Logan had been astonished at how small it was, so slender and insubstantial, with the blood dried to a rusty brown. It hardly seemed like something that could have killed anything, and yet it apparently had. "A … friend of mine was killed with this. It's some kind of poison dart, but the police haven't been able to determine what the hell it is. Since it's the only way to find her killer, I was hoping you could use your connections to find a lab that could analyze it and actually pull something out of it."  
  
There was genuine shock in Tagawa's languid brown eyes, tempered somewhat by the crème de menthe he'd already had at the charity function. "Killed? I don't wish to disappoint you, but even if there is someone who can analyze it properly, I do not think such evidence will be legally admissible anywhere …"  
  
"I know. This isn't gonna be settled in court."  
  
Tagawa studied him, with a surprising intensity for a man so mild. And even though he looked slightly rumpled, he still exuded that same dignity that made Logan like him instantly, as well as reminded him to be just a bit wary of him, because his natural placidity was not due to passivity; he was a sharp man who simply watched, and waited to make his move. He was the every day life equivalent of a Grand Master. "Logan -" he began, and his tone sounded like bad news.  
  
"She was a cop," he quickly explained. "A good one. And I'm afraid what happened to her is somehow my fault. The cops are at a standstill - one of 'em gave this to me - and I need to find this guy. I need to make this right."  
  
Tagawa's eyes never left his, judging his veracity. It was a test he must have passed, because after a moment he nodded, and reached out to take the evidence bag. "You understand this is easier if I think of this as mercenary stuff rather than murder."  
  
Logan nodded in agreement. "I understand."  
  
Tagawa opened up a small shelf in the seatback (maybe it was a James Bond kind of vehicle; maybe there was a jetpack somewhere in here) and put the evidence bag on it, possibly so he didn't have to touch it anymore. "It's an awful world sometimes," he said sadly.   
  
Logan sighed heavily, tacitly agreeing, settling back into the seat. The vehicle was moving, but it was hard to tell. It was such a smooth ride, and the interior was made in such a way that the passenger couldn't really hear what the engine was up to. Were all limos like this? He really didn't know, as he'd never been in one before (or at least not to his memory). But he could see its appeal, even if they looked so phallic it was a joke.  
  
Tagawa broke the long silence by saying, "I'm surprised anyone would try and anger you. All respect intended, but who would deliberately go after you?"  
  
Logan smirked and attempted to see the world outside the dark glass. "You'd be surprised."  
  
****  
  
Bear Creek- 16 Years Ago  
  
She had to talk to Monie - Constable Monica Stenz - about him, because she was the only one who could really work the facial feature compiling software with any kind of competence. But Brent was just hanging around to be an asshole.  
  
"Ya know, if he was shaved, bathed, and brought to my tent, I'd do him," Monie said, turning the laptop screen towards her to show her what she had.  
  
Brent made a rude noise. "You'd do a crazy guy?"  
  
"Have you met my ex-husband? I already have."  
  
"Far be it from me to interrupt the comic relief," Lily said impatiently, and gestured at the screen, where a computerized illustration showed a guy with some similarity to Logan - but only some. "His nose is a bit sharper, his face leaner, and his hair is kind of weird. There's a bit more of it, and it's obvious he hasn't combed it. Also, it looked like he trimmed his beard with scissors, but neatly done, especially since he didn't use a mirror."  
  
"What was that thing with the mirrors anyways?" Monie asked, turning the laptop back towards her.   
  
"Frightened by his own reflection?" Brent suggested.  
  
They were in her office in the police station, which was technically the old post office building - when the post office used to also be a trading post and dried good store. Times changed, mini-marts came into existence, and the post office got itself a bigger, decent building a couple miles down the road. It was the cops that got the drafty place that often smelled of mold in summer, and creaked in the big winds like it was about to come tumbling down on their heads. It was basically a low building of cinderblock design, with a front area that was technically the province of her entire "force" (all five of them - and even that was considered too many, even with all these tourists in and out), her office, a holding 'cell" that also doubled as a coffee room (on the rare occasion they arrested someone, they usually turned them over to the larger province authorities, simply because they had neither the space or the manpower to deal with them), a small bathroom unisex out of necessity, and her office, which was Chief Milligan's office until he retired three months ago. Because it was so hard to find actual "chiefs" (not to mention cops) for rural areas such as these, she was promoted to Chief, but it was de facto until the paperwork promoting her went through. There was nothing like bureaucracy.  
  
Her desk was raw pine, stained but too lightly to matter, and every now and then she found a splinter whenever she least wanted to. It was lightly covered with files, the paperwork of every day life (the last crime to cross her desk before the corpse? A tourist reporting the theft of his snowboard), a coffee cup decorated with a cartoon moose wearing a toque and thinking "Now where did I park my snowmobile?" full of pencils and pens, and a boxy, extremely old computer pushed off to one side. Her chair was padded and reasonably nice, but she knew the plastic chair on the other side that Monie was currently occupying - and its mate, that Brent was consciously avoiding by leaning against the door - was highly uncomfortable; she was pretty sure that they were rejected dentist waiting room chairs. They couldn't have been more uncomfortable if they had spikes in them.  
  
"I know you're being a jackass," Lily told Brent. "But I think you're right. He didn't - doesn't - like looking at his own reflection."  
  
"So we've established he's no narcissist," Monie said, fingers flying over the keyboard.  
  
"How could he be? He's like Eddie Munster, all grown up." Brent noted.  
  
"Somebody's jealous," Monie said in a childish sing song.  
  
Lily opened her top desk drawer, and pulled out one of the large rubber bands she kept not just for paperwork, but also discipline. She took aim, and said, "Next smart ass gets it between the eyes."  
  
Brent held up his hands in mock surrender. He was a long, thin man with chestnut hair that was always a little longer than regulation, but who cared in these parts? He was good looking in a sort of sleek, youthful way, although something about his long, narrow face and the glint in his always sly eyes warned you right away he was trouble.   
  
"You know, this could be considered abuse," Monie noted.  
  
"Tell it to the RCMP."  
  
She simply turned the laptop towards her again. "Pick a nose - any nose." Monie was somewhat short and somewhat stocky, but had an attractive oval face and luxuriously, naturally curly brunette hair when she wasn't putting it back in a heavy and somewhat dowdy bun. She had grown up just a few miles away, in a speed bump of a town called (according to her, appropriately) Folly, and was as tough as they came. Not only could she be your local police officer, she could build you a home annex and skin you a coat, from a passing skier if necessary. Brent sometimes liked to refer to her as "Grizzly Stenz".   
  
Lily pointed to one of the six noses displayed on the computer screen, all certain types designated by a number. "Number four, I think."  
  
As Monie turned it back around and started to remodel the Logan "sketch" composite, Brent said, "Okay, so what am I missing here? He's starving, obviously nuts, and seems to have no idea who he is, but he speaks some Asian language fluently, and that freaked him out?"  
  
"That's about the size of it." She dropped the rubber band on her desk, figuring she wasn't going to have to use it just yet.  
  
"Okay, any distinguishing marks," Monie asked, in a voice suggesting she was done with the compilation. "And are you sure you don't want to amend his weight? One eighty seems to be a lot for a guy who's half starved."  
  
"I know, but … it feels right. He carries himself like he's got a lot of weight to throw around. If anyone sees him, they won't think he's some half-starved wretch." She closed her eyes, and pictured him in her mind across the table from her, trying to see if there were any details she might have forgotten. "I think he's got a mole on his left cheek, but it's covered by his facial hair…" She concentrated hard, and realized there was a small lump beneath his shirt. "Wait … he was wearing something around his neck."  
  
"A choke chain?" Brent suggested.  
  
She opened her eyes and gave him a cutting glare. "No, we're not discussing your girlfriend."  
  
"I thought his girlfriend went "baa"," Monie said, jumping in.  
  
Brent scowled at the both of them, but said, "Like any one woman could tie me down."  
  
"I'm sure they're tried; tell them to use a nail gun next time," Monie said acidly, and then turned her cool hazel eyes on her. "So what was it, boss?"  
  
Now she wished she'd have thought to ask him about it in the diner, but considering the shapes of the thing, what else could it be? "They were small rectangles - dog tags?"  
  
Monie raised her eyebrows. "Military? Well, crazed vets are not unheard of."  
  
Brent snapped his fingers, as if he just had a great idea. "Yeah, and that might explain the other language - he was stationed overseas somewhere."  
  
Lily consider that, frowning. It was certainly a good possibility, and was another avenue to explore.   
  
"Might also give him the ability to kill," Monie said, turning the laptop to face her. "Is this him?"  
  
She studied the computer composite, and nodded, deciding it was close enough. "Yeah. I want you to circulate it among the rest of the guys here, and fax that to every police department within a hundred and thirty kilometer radius."  
  
Monie whistled low, turning the laptop back towards her. "That far?"  
  
"Yeah, and maybe you wanna fax it back to the Alberta authorities too. Logan has the ability to cover lots of ground on foot, more than you'd think possible for a man without equipment. But I want you to make it clear I want updates on his location only. He is not wanted, I don't want him arrested, and for god's sakes, no one approach him armed. This is a safety issue as far as I'm concerned; I just want him in from the cold before the next big storm socks in, that's all."  
  
Brent straightened up, concern creasing his face. "But Sarge, what if he's our guy?"  
  
She knew he meant the murder. "There's nothing to indicate that he is. In fact, I think the necessary level of forensic awareness needed to leave a crime scene so clean is beyond him at this point. He can even adequately feed himself."  
  
"But it could have been coincidence," Brent argued. "The scene was compromised by the environment. He could have lucked out."  
  
"How lucky can one man be, Brent? Besides, if he had a weapon, I never saw it, and he was so freaked out I'm sure he'd have pulled it in the beginning if he had one." Okay, that was a guess, and from the look Brent gave her, he knew that. "I think he's scared, but I don't think he's dangerous to anyone but himself."  
  
Monie looked up, the computer screen reflection a blue light in her eyes. "Frightened animals are the most dangerous, Chief."  
  
That was a truism she had been trying very hard not to think about. "Just get it out to everybody before they go on or off duty tonight," she told her, getting to her feet. "And fax it like it's contagious. Brent, I want you to call the military bases and hospitals around here, see if they've got anyone who went AWOL that matches our guy's description. Keep in mind the name Logan may have just been pulled off the menu, so that's unreliable at best."  
  
Brent frowned at his assignment, always hating the desk work most of all. He preferred to be out there doing something, but the sad truth of policing in the Bear Creek region was that there was very rarely anything worth doing. He was a good cop, and she figured she'd lose him to one of the bigger outfits as soon as he could no longer stand his own restlessness. "What are you gonna be doing?" He asked, and it neared a challenge.  
  
She picked up the file on her desk, and waved it like a trophy. "I still have to crack the nefarious snowboard theft case. Let's get moving, people, this guy is a marathon sprinter. I wanna find him before he's out of my jurisdiction, and before that storm hits."  
  
And she wanted to figure him out before he disappeared for good, or more bodies started turning up. She figured either option, of roughly equal possibility, was not good at all.  
  
8  
  
Somehow, he thought the Professor would be more surprised.   
  
There seemed to be no reaction at all as he looked at the photo and glanced at the papers - if he judged from the length of his looks correctly, he read some of the French ones - and then seeing that the envelope was sent from Wolfram and Hart, called up Logan's undead buddies.  
  
A strangely perky woman answered, and said he couldn't speak to Angel because he was busy "killing something in the bathroom" (did anyone want to know? No, but she started to tell them; mercifully, Xavier stopped her soon after she said, "It just came out of the toilet, and apparently ate Phil from marketing … or maybe it came out of Phil from marketing …") , but they got switched over to Wesley, which was better, because at least he was Human. (He was, wasn't he?)  
  
Scott had to sit in stunned silence as Xavier actually offered Wesley a position on the X-Men, should he ever tire of Los Angeles. As Scott mouthed that he was absolutely crazy, he heard Xavier say, in his mind. *He'd be a good asset. What bothers you more - that he has no powers, or that he's a friend of Logan's?*  
  
That was unfair. He had no problem that he had no powers (unless the ability to cast spells that actually seemed to work was a power), but how could he be an X-Man? He'd be the weak link; they'd always have to worry about covering his back.  
  
Or would they? Xavier didn't seem to think so, and although their tale had been somewhat rambling and hard to follow, certainly the unbreakable trio of Rogue, Bobby, and Brendan seemed duly impressed that he tried to fight the "big ugly thing", and got up after being put through a wall, after they had written him off as dead. Maybe the fact that he survived and was one of the last people standing in the mansion when he got back was impressive enough.   
  
Thankfully, Wesley turned down the offer - for now (did he have to add that?) - and sounded flattered, which he damn well should have been. Scott was grateful Xavier hadn't extended the offer to Angel, but maybe the Professor realized he should draw the line at vampires. The Professor explained the envelope had been "accidentally" opened (and gave him a dirty look, which he thought was unfair - the last thing Logan got was a head), and there was some question about the contents. Wesley explained that Yasha had spurred them on a search through their archives, and they found some records pertaining in a roundabout way to Logan, although they had no idea why he was in Wolfram and Hart's files at all. They were obviously keeping track of the "mutant phenomenon" before science was aware of it, but it was unclear why; it was also unclear why Logan seemed to have been "singled out" so early. He said there may have been a heretofore unknown connection to the "Weapon X" project, but they hadn't been able to find anything even circumstantial.  
  
Scott was about to ask what Scorpion's project - he was "Weapon X," right? - had to do with this, but he heard Xavier's voice in his head again, swift and stern. *Not now, Scott. Later.*  
  
He sat forward, staring at Xavier, who seemed to avoid his eyes. Was Logan somehow connected to Scorpion's project? Was that why they were friends? What the hell was the "project" anyways - something about mutant killing machines, right? Well, Logan would fit right in there, all right.  
  
Wesley then seemed to grow even more glum - if that was possible, and told them their timing was "fortuitous" (now he saw why the professor wanted him here - he'd make a terrific English teacher), as one of their "seers" had some free time come up, and had done some "casting", whatever that meant. "One of the men in the photograph," he said, his faint British accent giving the words a portentous sound they didn't deserve. "His code name is Eagle if you follow the names and men from left to right. His real name is Julius Easton, and he is still alive, in a convalescent home in Portland, Oregon."  
  
"Alive?" Xavier repeated, hands clenching on the top of his desk.  
  
It took a moment for Scott to get it, but he did. If this guy did serve in some sort of military operation with Logan, would he remember him? Would he know things about him that no one else did?  
  
"We do not know the state of his physical or mental health," Wesley warned, and rightly so. No one in that photo looked all that young - what was this Easton guy's age? He had to be pushing a hundred. "But I thought I should tell Logan and let him figure out for himself what he wished to do. I can e-mail you the address."  
  
But the Professor had picked up a pen and scribbled a note on a scrap of paper. "No need, I have it."  
  
"Oh yes, telepathy. Makes things easier, doesn't it?"  
  
"Quite," Xavier agreed. "I will pass it on to Logan once he returns."  
  
"Please. And … tell him I'm still sorry about Yasha."  
  
Xavier grimaced as if in pain, and said, "I will." As soon as he cut the connection, he leaned back in his chair and sighed.   
  
"Is something wrong?" Scott asked, getting up from his chair. He was tired of being frozen, in fear that Wesley would pick him up listening in.  
  
"No. It's just that … perhaps I was wrong about Yasha."   
  
Scott wondered what brought that on, but decided he had other questions he wanted to ask first. "Look, what was that thing about Weapon X? There's something going on here that I don't know about, isn't there?"  
  
The Professor's blue eyes were cool as they seemed to measure him, and after a long pause, he said, "If I tell you, it can't leave this room. You can't mention it to Logan either, not until he's ready to talk about it."  
  
Suddenly, Scott had a very bad feeling about this. "What?"  
  
"Marcus lied, to take the … well, fall, I suppose, for Logan. Marcus is not Weapon X; Logan is. It was Stryker's program, and they tried to recruit Marcus after the fact, but it never happened. If you ever wanted proof that Marcus cared about someone besides himself, there it is."  
  
It made so much sense. Logan had always been nothing but a killing machine, so how could he not be it? "You knew this?" Scott said, finally grasping the full implications. "You knew he was a programmed mutant killer, and you allowed him to stay at the school?"  
  
Xavier shook his head. "Scott -"  
  
But he didn't let him finish. "You endangered the kids? To what, prove a point? To spit in the government's face?"  
  
He fixed him with a cold, hard gaze that he hadn't seen too often - or at least, not directed at him. "Logan is not a machine, he's a man. If you haven't noticed, he's broken his programming. Stryker's main problem with him was he wouldn't complete adhere to it for long."  
  
Scott threw up his hands, feeling the anger he felt before come back in a triumphant, tidal surge. Some father figure he was - all he had been doing lately was lying to him. "And that could have been what he wanted you to think. Did that ever occur to you?"  
  
Xavier's lips thinned to a grim line. If he was at all repentant about this, it didn't show. "I would know."  
  
"Would you?" he scoffed. "Considering the sheer number of telepaths the Organization employs?" he knew he was speaking of his own experience at the Organization's hands, but he didn't want to think that Logan could shake the 'programming" he couldn't, healing factor or not. Logan was not the toughest man alive, he was simply the most pig headed. His stomach burned with acid as he began to realize he was surrounded by lies; was there anyone he could trust anymore?  
  
(He couldn't even trust Jean anymore.)  
  
"How long have you known?" He demanded angrily. "How long have you kept this from us?" 


	6. Part 6

Xavier glared at him as if Scott was somehow insulting him. "Not long. But I would never endanger the children, Scott. I can't believe you'd even think that."  
  
"Oh, I don't know, maybe because everybody's been lying to me. Funny how that can get to you."  
  
His look remained unrelenting, and somewhere in the back of his mind, Scott started to feel bad. But not so bad that he wanted to take it back. "I admit we haven't been completely honest with you, but these have been trying times."  
  
He scoffed, crossing his arms tightly over his chest. "No kidding."  
  
"Is this what you're really angry about?"  
  
"Don't try that with me. I thought I was important here."  
  
"You are."  
  
"Oh really? Well, how am I supposed to be when no one will tell me the truth?"  
  
Xavier closed his eyes as he sighed, as if just having this discussion was physically taxing. "Things have been ... so wrong. It's not an excuse, it's just a fact. I never wanted any of you to feel like you didn't matter."  
  
Scott felt sick with anger, but not all of it was directed at the Professor. Some of it was directed at the absent Logan, at himself -   
  
- (at Jean) -   
  
- at Bob, and at the horrible twist of fate that threw them all together. He turned away, about to leave, but he froze with his hand on the doorknob, tired of storming out of places like a drama queen.  
  
This used to be his home. He wanted it to be his home again; he wanted it back. He leaned his forehead against the door, and said, "I want her back. The way she was, not ..." He didn't even know what to call her, so he didn't say anything.  
  
"So do I," Xavier commiserated, a twinge of sorrow in his voice. "All we can hope is that she comes to her senses, and comes back to us."  
  
Scott blinked back tears as he left Xavier's office, heading to the private retreat that was his garage.  
  
He had been around here long enough to know the impossible when he heard it.  
  
****  
  
Bear Creek - 16 Years Ago  
  
In a situation like this, it made you wonder why God hated you so much, if you were a religious sort of person.  
  
Reg Hobart wasn't, and yet as he sat in the cab of a freezing tow truck, the thermos of hot coffee held between his knees slowly growing cold, his breath turning to frost on the inside of the windshield, he still felt like he had been condemned to hell.  
  
It was all his fault too. There were some poachers out here, illegally trapping an endangered species of wolf, and after coming across a bloody leg in a bear trap (and the corpse of the poor animal frozen stiff not far away), he was determined to get these redneck, booger picking morons himself. This was his case, and he would close it.   
  
He realized the fact that his dog, Lobo, looked a lot like one of these wolves probably just fueled his anger. But some of it was a strange indignation he never realized he possessed until now. In a way, he could understand Humans taking things out on one another; it seemed like a curse of the species. But picking on something like an animal - and wolf or not, it was defenseless against one of those steel jawed traps (who wasn't?) - seemed completely indefensible.  
  
From what he'd been able to tell, they laid the traps at night, and came to check them early in the morning, always using the cover of darkness and inhumanity of the hours to make a relatively clean break for it. But tonight he was staying up, and he was going to nail those suckers as soon as they showed to put their traps in. Still, had he picked the wrong night for it?  
  
That storm was coming in, slowly but deliberately, like a lion stalking its prey. What little sun there was had been swallowed by clouds the color of wrought iron, and the temperature hadn't so much dropped as plummeted. You live in the mountains long enough, you knew when a bad was going to hit - you could feel it in your bones - and he could feel it now. He could no longer feel his balls, shriveled up to the size of currents, and that was yet another sign that if he was smart, he'd end his poacher stake out now, and come back another night.  
  
But there was another reason why he was here, and the reason that Sarge Whitewolf had okayed it in the first place: John Doe. The body was found at Briar's Corner, which was just around the hard bend of the road; it was one of the poacher's known hot spots. Coincidence? Perhaps, but perhaps there was a falling out among the group that led to murder, or someone witnessed something they shouldn't, and they panicked. Either way, it wasn't a logical leap to think that someone capable of mutilating animals for an illegal profit would be above killing a fellow Human, under certain circumstances. Reg honestly believed that most people would kill under certain circumstances, but some people were simply more inclined to. And he felt the poachers were among the more steeply inclined.  
  
The tow truck had been abandoned here for two days, so he was pretty sure the poachers would think nothing of it. (The owner of it, Tim Rose, had thrown a rod, and was waiting for another tow truck to come in and tow it to his garage - to add to the wonderful irony, he found it difficult to find another tow truck to do it.) But that meant he had to sit here without heat, and with just the smallest "viewport" in the heavily iced windshield and side windows. He'd had worse, honestly - did he not brag to the others about growing up in the Yukon, and say anyone who couldn't stand zero degree temperatures was a pussy? He wondered if they ever figured out that his father was a structural engineer who built a house so energy efficient that there wasn't even a breeze under the door or near the windows, ever, not even when blizzards raged outside. And Reg never ventured out when it was that bloody cold. He wasn't a liar, though; he just edited the truth a bit. (He did not like to think that that would make him an excellent politician, but every now and then it did occur to him.)  
  
The dark clouds were throwing off his sense of time, but he was pretty sure they'd be around soon. Still, he probably had time for a piss, which was a good thing, as he desperately needed one.  
  
The door creaked when he opened it, and he could hear newly formed ice cracking in the hinges. And even though he was freezing his ass off inside the truck, the wind hit him like a slap across the face with a frozen oar - shit, how he hated mountain winters. But to ever admit it was to pretty much admit he was the pussy he'd always talked about, and that was never going to happen.  
  
The sound seemed to echo through the rolling hills of white, and he knew it couldn't have been as loud as it seemed to his ears. Still, if an avalanche occurred, he wouldn't have been surprised.  
  
This section of the pass was essentially a valley, wedged between slopes covered with thick clutches of limber and white bark pines, with mountain hemlocks, silver fir, and subalpine larch added for variety, all looking sugar frosted and as pretty as a Christmas card. It was easy to tell which trees the animals were using for food, as their footprints made slight paths in the slowly growing snow. It wasn't a wildly accessible area off the pass, so it was ideal for animals and poachers alike, seeking the same type of privacy. In fact, you could do just about anything here short of cannibalism, and it was unlikely anyone would know before the spring thaw. And even then, it was a crapshoot.  
  
He quickly got out of view of the truck, his breath exploding into hard white clouds before him as he struggled through the hard, knee deep snow to a relatively close red cedar, which he tried to hide behind as he took a piss. Christ, it was an act of faith to bare even a part of his dick in this weather, and there was something rather unsettling about the way his piss steamed like it was molten, the snow melting like it had been hit with lava, ice crackling like flames.   
  
The last weather report he heard said it was minus seventeen degrees Celsius out here. Did he dare believe that? Wouldn't he have been frostbitten to the core, in spite of all the heavy weather clothes he was wearing? Maybe there was no minus; maybe they meant seventeen degrees Fahrenheit. Not all that much better, but theoretically manageable.  
  
He had put away his poor freezing dick and zipped up - a hard task with all these clothes on - when he realized he heard a noise. He went perfectly still, and strained to hear where it was coming from.  
  
It sounded like it was somewhere up the slope, somewhere in the stand of trees ahead, but not getting close. An animal maybe, on a parallel course. But the noise was a pretty serious, regular crunching, the ice and snow cracking under heavy steps, and a shock of fear went through him as he thought "bear". No matter that he had never seen a bear in these parts, or that it was winter and they'd be hibernating anyways; it was just one of those worse case scenarios that always happened when you weren't expecting it.  
  
Thanks to the lowering clouds and the approach of night, illumination was dim, but it was times like these that light seemed to radiate off the snow itself, reflecting stored light like a solar battery. It was like night in the winter was never completely dark, just an indigo that seemed eerie, a calm before a storm that never came. And it was in that blue light he saw something moving through the trees far up the slope, cutting off towards the left, not heading towards him or even looking in his direction - a man.  
  
He thought of reaching for his gun, in case it was one of the poachers, but he knew there was something wrong with the guy, even though he could only see him as a dark profile. The clothes he was wearing seemed too light, too weather inappropriate,   
  
And he was moving fairly quietly and rapidly in spite of the snow. And what had he done with his hair? Talk about an overdoes of product - abuse of mousse.  
  
Something about him looked familiar, in a strange sort of way, and he waited until he could no longer see the guy before moving himself, slogging back to the truck. Wincing as the door creaked and the sound seemed to echo, he reached for the flyer   
  
Monie had thrown at him before he left. There was a resemblance between this guy and the one he saw in the trees.  
  
He reached for his radio, and decided to call it in. He may have just seen her man.  
  
9  
  
British Columbia - Present Day  
  
  
  
  
  
And he thought Yasha's place had a fabulous view.  
  
Since he didn't think it was a good idea for a limo associated with Tagawa to pull up in front of a place where he was staying, so he just accompanied him back to his place; Tagawa didn't mind. In fact, he found a beer in his fridge to give him while he went off to make some calls, leaving Logan alone to marvel over what a hell of a living room he had.  
  
It was twice as large as the mansion's lounge, maybe two and a half times the size, with hardwood floors covered with ornate and plush "Oriental" rugs scattered about, set off by a huge large screen television and entertainment system that put Marc's system to shame. There was a painting over the tan suede sofa, an unusual print of Joan Miro's "Personages In The Night Guided" and he wondered two things simultaneously: did anyone ever make a print of that, and how the hell did he know the name of the painting? He looked closer, trying to see if there was a Miro signature … and then wondered how the fuck would he know what it looked like? So he stopped, and added it to the growing pile of things that bothered him about himself.  
  
All of this was dwarfed by the window wall overlooking not just the harbor, but a slice of the Vancouver skyline. The buildings were lit up, jewel like in the night, not yet as garish or manifold as New York or even Baltimore. Right now, slightly above it all, it seemed like pitch perfect urban skyline, lights reflected on the dark water like stars. In a way, it reminded him of the view of Sydney from Bob's house, and made him wonder what it was about rich old guys and breathtaking views? Wasn't the cliché only women cared about views? Although he knew Bob would happily accommodate any woman, he had a feeling that view was specifically his, and Tagawa had no female in his life beyond staff; just by smell, he knew he lived alone. He suspected he was gay, but did it matter? If he was, he was very discreet about it, but he would expect nothing less from a man whose culture frowned on such a thing.   
  
Logan stared at the city for a long time, at the movement of the dark water against distant shores, and could hear Tagawa in a room below (he had a "private office" below what he considered "the main house") talking to someone on the phone, trying to arrange a quick yet thorough analysis of something "in the strictest confidence". Was money power, or was power its own thing? How did you tell?  
  
He sat down on his sofa (which felt even nicer than it looked - damn, he had never sat on a sofa this nice; even the suede smell was pleasant) and took gulps of his beer, trying not to listen to Tony's conversation. It wasn't hard once he started disappearing inside his own head.  
  
This didn't make sense, and yet he felt there was a connection factor to the things that didn't make sense. But what? Okay, so they single out Lily, but Stoff was dead … so what if it wasn't Stoff? What if he and Ellison had it all wrong? What if the killer wanted them to think it was Stoff as misdirection? But who the hell could it be? Stoff was the only connecting factor between him and Lilly. Unless someone else got away, someone they didn't know, but never forgot them. Maybe they also engineered Stoff's demise too.  
  
Just thinking about it made his head hurt. He pressed the still cold can to his forehead and tried very hard to remember the crucial detail he knew he must have been forgetting. If it wasn't that, what else could it be?  
  
****  
  
Bear Creek - 16 Years Ago  
  
  
  
  
  
If Hobart was right, there was only one place Logan could be headed - the Hansen cabin. Old Man Hansen only used it in the summer, and his was the last cabin before the tree line. There were probably a few shotgun shacks and shanties, but none that would give much in the way of shelter.   
  
Lily didn't bother to take the road, especially since it was starting to snow. It was the dry, granular style that didn't even have aesthetic appeal, and would pile up a lot quicker than you 'd expect. The wind was starting to kick up too, occasionally making the snow come in horizontal, making her glad she wore her ski goggles. But even keeping it out of her eyes didn't improve visibility one iota; she could barely see the black silhouettes of trees before she was right on top of them, and hit some of the slopes hard enough that she went briefly airborne. It was kind of fun, but also dangerous - if she wiped out and broke a leg now, she doubted anyone would find her before she died of exposure or shock.  
  
Eventually, when she figured out her location, she turned off the snowmobile and decided to hoof the rest of the way to the cabin; the trees were too thick now, and with her ability to see the trees severely limited, she would probably crash before she reached Hansen's place.   
  
She wrapped her scarf tightly around her neck, tucking the ends inside her parka, and decided to leave her goggles on, at least until she reached the cabin. Even though she was covered head to toe, only her cheeks exposed to the elements, they already felt frozen solid. What a brutal night to be outside.  
  
She slogged through the snow, sometimes having to lift her own leg up to get it out, and grumbled to herself. It could never be unseasonably warm, could it? No, it always had to be unseasonably cold. It almost made you wish that global warming would hurry the hell up.  
  
A walk that would have taken five minutes took at least ten, and she nearly walked straight into three trees before she made out the dark , looming shape that could only be the Hansen cabin. "Logan!" She shouted, but she could barely hear herself as the wind kicked up and tore away her voice, the snow hitting her face with the force of pebbles. Fuck! She should be at home, in front of a warm fire, getting really tanked up on brandy. That reminded her she should tell Reg to pack it in. She knew he wanted to catch those poachers very badly - and she wanted to nail those fuckos to the wall too - but even if they were moronic enough to come out in a storm like this, it wasn't worth Reg freezing off his trigger finger off. He could come back and get them another night.   
  
She pounded on the door with her thickly gloved hand, shouting, "Logan, you know it's me! I'm alone, and I just want to talk. I'm comin' in, okay?" She waited for a reply, and didn't hear any (she couldn't hear anything beyond the hollowing of the wind), so she pushed the door open. She meant to do it gently, but the wind gave it a brutal shove, and it slammed back violently.   
  
It was hard to see - he had no candles or lanterns lit - so she took out her flashlight and turned it on (which was difficult to do with these gloves), and even though she had it aimed down at the floor, she still saw him wince when it came on. He was sitting beside the pot bellied stove in the corner (of course there was no fire in it), arms wrapped around himself, knees brought up to his chest, trying to make himself as small and warm as possible, and trying equally to pretend he wasn't shivering. His bloodless lips kind of gave him away.   
  
His eyes were equally tired and resentful. "Are you ever gonna leave me alone?"  
  
She was too busy closing the door against the wind to give him a sarcastic look. "That's a mighty fine thank you."  
  
He sighed. "Thank you. I wanna be left alone."  
  
"Well, Garbo, have you taken a look outside?" She asked, turning to face him and putting her back against the door. She kept the flashlight aimed down at the wooden floor. Some of the light glinted off the nails in the loose floorboards, and she wondered when the floor had gotten so warped. "Look, I have an offer for ya. I gotta friend who runs a ski lodge, and he will put you up in one of the empty rooms until the storm is over. You'll get a nice bed, a warm bath, and food's on the house - well, him, if he knows what's good for him. There's no strings attached at all; I would just feel better knowing me and my guys aren't gonna find you as a corpsicle once the front passes." She didn't add that it would also give them more time to figure out who the hell he was, and hoped he hadn't figured that part out for himself.   
  
He continued to eye her warily, and she got a feeling, whoever he was, he had been hurt a lot. (Enough to strike out at someone else?) "The cold can't kill me. It just makes me wish I was dead." He said it like he believed it.  
  
"It could kill anyone. I feel like I'm dyin' now."  
  
"Then go. 'm good."  
  
His eyes were flat and wide, in a way that reminded her of an owl. He was half sane, like a gut shot man could be half dead, only in this case it was impossible to say what would save him or what would damn him. Sanity didn't bleed. 'Fucking hell man,' she thought. 'What is your story? How did you turn out like this?' "I'm not leaving without you," she said, as the wind moaned through the cracks in the wood. Sounded like banshees.  
  
He blinked rapidly, and she could his pupils, in the dim light cast off the floor, had narrowed to impossibly thin pinpricks. Hadn't they been almost all black, so wide there was almost no iris, when she came in? Now that she thought about it, his eyes weren't right. Yes, pupils contracted or dilated in response to light or dark, but that dramatically? Cats did, but he was a bit too big to be a cat; if his eyes became chatoyant, she just might shoot him.   
  
(Oh great - here she was, a de facto chief, and she had a case of the willies. Soon she was going to become one of those "Sasquatch does exist" nuts who always scoured the forests for oversized footprints and bear scat. This was not the fucking X-Files, and he was not some big fucking cat man - he was probably the crazed vet they talked about back at the station.)  
  
"I ain't gonna hurt the guy," he protested. "I'm just stayin' here 'til the worst of it blows over, and then I'll be on my way."  
  
Now she was sure she missed something. "Hurt what guy?"  
  
"The owner."  
  
She held her hands apart in a kind of shrug. "Why should I worry about that? He doesn't come here in winter."  
  
He gave her that blank look yet again, like he was staring out through the wood of the door behind her. "He was here recently. Or somebody was."  
  
She raised her eyebrows, looking around the cabin with her flashlight. There was nothing here, besides the potbellied stove - Hansen was one of the crazed, self-sufficient type who still managed to bring a horse trailer full of crap with him when he came up here, and took it out with him when he left. The stove must have been too heavy to carry. "Why do you say that?"  
  
Logan hesitated, as if he realized he'd just said the wrong thing, but didn't know how to get out of it now. "I can smell 'em."  
  
He was serious. She paused, took a deep breath, and got a lungful of nothing but the sharp sense of cold. What the hell was she doing? "What do you mean you smell them?" Wasn't there a paranoia disorder of some sort that manifested in sensory delusions? It was clear he was paranoid - perhaps it wasn't harmless old kook crazy, but deeply deranged crazy.   
  
(Or he was a cat man, with a cougar's sense of smell.)  
  
She played the flashlight over the floor again, and once more nails caught the light. They were sticking out of a floorboard in the rough center of the room, one with a warped edge - the only one with an edge like that. "He put something under there," Logan said, nodding his head at the floorboard.  
  
She felt a sharp burn of acid in her stomach, yet paradoxically felt colder at the same time. "Who did? The man you smell?" He could be talking about himself this way, a second personality. And considering how cold it was, he could be talking about a body; if he killed them elsewhere, there'd be no smell, simply because it was too much like a meat locker for decaying to begin.   
  
He didn't answer, and while she approached the warped board, keeping her flashlight beam firmly on it, she kept the corner of her eye fixed on him. Maybe she had completely misjudged him; maybe he was the killer they were looking for.  
  
She knelt carefully, placing the flashlight down on the floor beside her, and grabbed the warped board. The nails were banged in haphazardly, a half assed job that suggested whoever did it wasn't expecting it to be discovered by anyone else. (And who would? Up here, in the middle of nowhere, in the dead of winter? After all, you could kill a man, leave him by the side of the road, and get away clean.) Once she pried the slat up, she immediately noticed it was far too narrow unless the body had been expertly dismembered, but the beam of light, full of dancing dust motes, caught what looked like a bag wrapped in cellophane.   
  
With anxiety still burning in her gut, she picked up the package, which was the size of a very large brick, although not quite as heavy. Through layers and layers of tightly sealed plastic, she saw … well, what? It was white.  
  
"It doesn't smell right," Logan offered, his low voice in the quiet dark almost making her jump. (Bad, Catman, bad!) "It smells like … plants, and chemicals."  
  
"What the fuck are you talking about?" She snapped, sniffing the plastic. It smelled like plastic, although there was an undertone of … what, ammonia? Something sharp and yes, chemical.   
  
Was this cocaine or China white? Either a meth-amphetamine derivative or heroin, this brick - cut or not - would be worth a small fortune on the market. And there were three other bricks just like the one in her hands beneath the loose floorboard of Hansen's cabin.   
  
She glared at him, about to ask if this was his confession, him throwing himself on her mercy by turning over the drugs, but there was nothing like that in his expression - he honestly had no idea what it was. He looked like a cold, lost little boy, completely out of his element, dropped into a world he had yet to understand. Just to test a theory, she asked, "Do you know if this is heroin or coke?"  
  
His blank stare didn't waver one iota. She might as well have been speaking Greek - he had no idea what she was asking him. "Huh?"  
  
She had no way to carry this down, so she put the brick back in its hidey hole, and tried to put the board back as best she could. "Do you know how long ago this guy was here?"  
  
Logan shrugged a single shoulder. "A day, maybe two."  
  
She was aware she was taking a crazy man's word on it, but right now he was the closest thing she had to a witness. And now the murder of John Doe made sense - drug traffickers. They were hiding a stash up here - god knew why, but presumably these were small timers - and maybe they fought over it, or whatever the hell, but someone ended up dead because of it. And the prize they fought over had been stashed under the Hansen's cabin, probably mistaken for abandoned. "I need to call this in," she told him. "Can you do me a favor?"  
  
He continued to eye her warily, like she was the completely insane one here. And maybe she was for asking this of him. "What?"  
  
"Guard the cabin until I get back?" She was just going down to the road to pull Reg off his poacher duty - if in fact he was still there. If not, she'd just have to call in and wait for Nick to rouse Brent and Monie out of their beds. They needed to confiscate the drugs and set up a stake out immediately. She checked her cell phone again, but she still couldn't get a signal ; the storm picked a great fucking time to move in.  
  
"Why?"  
  
If she had any doubts about his innocence, she no longer did - there's no way he could have faked the clueless irritation in his voice. "Because I don't want anyone removing that stuff without my say so. It's illegal, and I think it's the motive that busts a unsolved case wide open. I'm not gonna be gone long. Can you do this for me, Logan?"  
  
He still didn't understand this; she could see it in his eyes. But after a long moment, he nodded almost timidly. "Yeah, but … hurry back. I don' like people."  
  
'So what does that make me?' she thought, but didn't say. Maybe it just meant he didn't like her either. Tolerated her in brief spurts, but otherwise hated her as much as the next person. "Shouldn't be gone long," she reassured him, turning off her flashlight and pocketing it. "Back in a jiff."  
  
A gust of wind came up and almost smashed the door into her face as she left, but she managed to stop it and preserve a modicum of dignity as she slogged through the snow , back to her snowmobile. She nearly got decked by a swaying tree branch, but managed to avoid running into trees otherwise. The snowmobile seemed reluctant to start, as if it just realized how fucking cold it actually was, but she got it going and headed down towards the road, where she knew Reg was staked out in the Rose's Towing truck. As thickly covered by snow as it was, it almost looked like a mastodon hidden within arctic permafrost. The fact that she could hardly see half a meter in front of her face also helped solidify that impression.   
  
"Reg?" She shouted, as she slewed the snowmobile to a stop beside his truck. But why did she bother to talk when she could barely hear herself think in this howling storm? Also, he might have packed it in and left already, like a sensible person would. But how sensible was Reg, in the big scheme of things?  
  
She couldn't see through the frosted windows, so she opened the driver's door, which seemed to creak and groan loudly under the strain, and said once more, "Reg-"  
  
But the rest of her inquiry died in her throat, as she smelled something metallic and meaty, and all too familiar for her taste.  
  
Reg was splayed out on the front seat of the truck, blood splattered on the passenger side window making it look black. And she didn't even hear the bullet fired at her until it hit her in the back. 


	7. Part 7

It was like a wasp sting on her shoulder blade, and she heard the windshield crack at the same time - another bullet that went wide, or the one that just punched through her? She didn't know, and figured it didn't matter - she let herself fall back limply to the snow, as if shot dead.  
  
Landing did not hurt as much as she feared it would, nor did the bullet wound, but she bet the latter was simply a temporary condition. She didn't know how she couldn't have seen the gunman when he must have been pretty damn close to hit his target in this weather, with such poor visibility, but she knew she had almost no time.   
  
Even though she was sure the snowmobile was acting as a blind, she moved slowly moved her hand alone, snapping the cover off her holster (a small noise, swallowed by the wind) and clicking off the safety as she slowly withdrew her sidearm, a Ruger KP89. She heard and felt no new shots, so presumably her swan dive had been convincing, or maybe that had been an extremely lucky shot.   
  
Her blood felt hot and itched maddeningly as it slid down her skin, but she managed to remain immobile, gun hidden beside her but cocked and ready, as she heard the crunch of footsteps nearing her.   
  
She wanted to wound this son of a bitch, keep him alive for questioning, but she knew she really didn't have a lot of choices here. He could have been alone, but it was more likely he had company. She would have to shoot first, and, if he survived, ask questions later.   
  
Granular snow only occasionally fell in her open eyes; the wind blew most of it sideways, and it missed her. In her peripheral vision, something white lumbered towards her, in time with the crunching snow, and the sniper rifle he held seemed starkly black against his white clothing. Snow camouflage - weren't they well prepared assholes?  
  
As soon as he moved fast, shifted the rifle, she pulled her own gun and fired, not aiming but going for the general area of his head. She hit her target even better than she ever could have anticipated; his head seemed to explode in a shower of blood and bone, and he didn't fall more than he toppled like an android that just had his battery pulled.  
  
It was funny: in her entire twelve years in the police force, she had never fired her weapon in the line of duty, and now she felt absolutely nothing now that she had, and had killed a man. Maybe because he had already killed Reg; maybe because adrenaline was now dumping into her system because she was shot and losing blood like crazy. She could feel its queerly soothing warmth spreading down her torso and back, and wondered where the bullet had exited.  
  
But it didn't matter. All that mattered was she get moving and keep moving for as long as possible. Her first thought was to keep going down the road, but she left Logan at the cabin. If there were more - and she had a suspicion there was - she couldn't leave a civilian to get killed in cold blood: serve and protect, right? Then they could take at least one of the bricks as evidence (or as negotiation, however it worked out) and get the fuck out of here; there was no way she could defend this place alone, but, on the plus side, the weather was working against them. They wouldn't be getting far.  
  
And, if Logan just happened to be in on this whole thing, she would kill him herself. So either way, that worked out.  
  
She grabbed the dead man's rifle, which was a type she had never seen before - it looked like a sleekly modified semi-automatic AR-15, with a strange kind of high powered sight, and what looked like some kind of silencer on the barrel. What the fuck was that? She'd never seen a silencer like this, and generally silencers weren't silent (really they were just mufflers), and she'd never seen one for a semi-auto rifle with sniper range capability. She yanked the strap off his arm and slung it over hers, as she noticed the remains of his head were wearing a strange type of goggles - night vision, but a lot sleeker than the military had. Maybe she was wrong about these guys being small time.  
  
There was pattering in the snow near her, but only when one dinged off the body of her snowmobile and whizzed past her head. She scrambled up onto the Sno-Cat, and seeing a light flash across the way, high up on the opposite hill. She blindly fired her newly acquired rifle, glad that, no matter how high the technology, the elements could almost always conspire to fuck it all up.  
  
She had to drop the rifle and let it hang on her side as she started the snowmobile, feeling blood pool in her left glove as passing bullets tugged at her clothes, and she had no idea if any hit her or not. The snowmobile lunged forward as she put figurative petal to the metal, and tore off towards the trees. Unless there was a guy waiting for her there, she knew that was the best place she could be.  
  
The thing was, in all this wind, it was impossible to aim as precisely as you wanted. The guy with no top to his skull anymore couldn't quite nail her with a kill shot at close range (unless, of course, the round did manage to nick an artery in her arm, back, or chest - then she'd been dead in about ten minutes), and the sniper across the way (on the move judging from the jouncing of the flash from the barrel) kept trying for the lucky shock. He got one, but probably not the one he expected.  
  
The noise was huge and fierce, and it seemed to hit her in the back as solidly as a battering ram, the heat washing over her like a sudden burst of sunlight. She had lost control of the Sno-Cat and was flying through the air when she realized, with a curious detachment, that one of the bullets had hit the gas tank of the tow truck, and the fucking thing had just gone up like a nuclear bomb.  
  
She landed hard in the snow as she heard the snowmobile impact a tree with fiberglass shattering force, as huge dollops of wet snow and heavy branches plummeted down, torn free by the explosion, and flaming bits of debris were picked up and carried in the wind, dropping down all around her. She had been rattled pretty good, and the bullet wound in her shoulder seemed to flare as if in sympathy with the fire now consuming the remains of the truck chassis, but she shouted at herself in her own mind to get the fuck up. If she stayed down, she was dead. And the truck explosion was a good thing - bad for Reg, as there wouldn't be much of him left to bury, but good for her, because now help was bound to be coming. They probably heard and saw that fireball all the way in Twotrees; she didn't have to call this in. Firemen and Brent and Monie were bound to be swarming this place en masse in ten or fifteen minutes … which was the only problem. She had to stay alive that long.  
  
She scrambled up to her feet and lurched towards the trees, rifle tucked under her arm, trying to ignore the dark spatters in the otherwise pristine snow. It was probably blood, but she didn't want to know.   
  
From the way branches cracked, she knew she was being shot at, but she wasn't sure from where. She was too far for the long distance sniper to have at (although she knew he was closing the distance), so there had to be a third gunman as well, somewhere in the woods. As soon as she saw a flash of muzzle fire somewhere in the darkness between the trees, she hefted the rifle to her shoulder and sprayed randomly, basically just putting down covering fire as she moved. She never stopped moving through the heavy snow; she could not afford to.  
  
The recoil from the rifle hurt her bullet wound more, and as she moved as rapidly as possible through the snow, a stitch developed in her side, leaving her short of breath. (At least she hoped it was just a stitch, and not internal damage … or another bullet wound … ) She gulped down as much air as she could, the cold scouring her throat raw.  
  
She had no idea how close she was to the cabin when something hidden behind a tree grabbed her, yanking her both by her arm and her rifle into its meager shadow. She was about to kick it when he hissed, "It's them, isn't it?"  
  
It was Logan. She could see his breath like white clouds, his grip on her arm like a steel claw. "Them?" She repeated quietly, not wanting to bring attention to them. Her ears were still ringing from the shots, and she wasn't sure if she heard footsteps crunching in snow or not. She figured he meant the drug runners, so she said, "Yeah. Weren't you supposed to guard the cabin?"  
  
"I have been," he said, and gestured towards something dark slightly uphill and ten meters from them - the cabin. Blinded by muzzle flash and snow glare, she had almost gone right past it. "You're bleeding."  
  
"Yeah, well, happens when you get shot, don't it? Can you fire a gun?"  
  
She couldn't see his eyes or his face; he was just a silhouette with fucking strange hair. But there was something in his posture, something tense and almost animalistic, and she was obscurely glad she could not see his face. "I dunno. But I don't need one."  
  
Rounds chewed up the bark of the tree trunk beside them, and branches snapped and came crashing down as Logan yanked her away, up towards the cabin, with more strength than she ever would've credited him with. But then again, this was a man who hiked the Rockies in jeans and flannels, with not a bit of frostbite to show for it.  
  
She turned back and fired at the man shooting at them, but she twisted in a way that sent a knife blade of pain through her body, and made her right leg feel suddenly inexplicably weak. Either she just took another bullet, or an old one just found a place to settle. Shit.  
  
More bullets peppered the snow as he dragged her into the cabin and slammed the door shut against the wind. She heard more rounds hit the cabin, punch through wood, but as soon as he let go of her arm, her right leg gave way and she hit the floor, aggravating all existing injuries. She tried not to cry out, but a little garbled yelp of pain escaped her anyways, and she realized she was squelching. Somewhere beneath layers of down and Gore-Tex, she was losing lots of blood, but then again, how many times had she been shot? She was running on pure adrenaline, and really couldn't even begin to guess.  
  
"Stay down," Logan said, and walked right out into a hail of bullets.  
  
She tried to call out after him, but he had already slammed the door behind him as more rounds punctured the cabin, sending splinters flying. She covered her head when they got close, but then started to crawl forward on her elbows and (one) knee, unable to believe that Logan had just walked out, unarmed, into the fate of Sonny Corleone. He really was a fucking headcase.  
  
And that's when she heard the scream.  
  
It was hard to say what it was at first - it didn't sound Human, but there was too much emotion in the sound to be anything but. It was a full throated roar of rage, with good dollops of agony and fear mixed in - it was so chilling she couldn't help but freeze to the spot. She must have not been alone, because for a second it was like all gunfire just died. Maybe they were trying to figure out if they woke up a bear or something, but Lily felt a shudder of terror down her spine as she realized they woke something else up. That was Logan - who else could it be? - and that scream sounded primal, savage, and too painful to keep in; it sounded like a man who just lost what little mind he had, and was far from happy about it … and needed something to take it out on.  
  
Gunfire started up again, and she forced herself to crawl forward more, trying to ignore the fact that she was crawling through her own blood, as she felt she had to give him some cover if he was still alive. There were no windows in this dingy hovel - why would there be? - but some of the rounds had torn a hole in the front wall that she was pretty sure she could jam her rifle barrel through. Everything in her hurt, and some part of her just wanted to stop and close her eyes, maybe get a breather, but she knew if she stopped her forward momentum she would stop altogether. She couldn't think, but she couldn't rest either; she would hold the fucking fort until back up arrived, because … well, she didn't know why anymore. She just felt it was something she had to do.  
  
A quick glance out the hole showed nothing but snow and darkness; there was no movement, no Logan splayed out on the ground. There were dark splotches that could have been blood, but just as well could have been debris. No way to tell at the moment. The wind moved the trees so violently she couldn't judge if there were people out there at all. But she still heard sporadic gunfire, as well as a man somewhere down the hill shout, "Oh my god!" There was another burst of gunfire, then dead silence. In a strange way, she didn't want to know what was happening out there.  
  
There was movement outside, white on black, and she squeezed the trigger, aware that Logan wasn't wearing white. The repeated recoils against her shoulder was agony, but she dealt with it, even with tears of pain spilling from her eyes. The white thing went down and didn't move, so she bet she tagged it. Or she nailed a snowdrift; honestly, either was good.  
  
God, she was so tired. And cold; her blood was starting to cool, and she felt slimy and wet, as well as beaten to a pulp. Her eyes were starting to lose focus as well, and by the way her rifle seemed to be wavering, her hands weren't exactly steady either. Her eyes really wanted to close, and she had to fight them all the way. And she wondered why she was bothering to fight it.  
  
She tried to focus, tightened her finger on the trigger, and wonder where the hell Logan was, and what he was doing. The gunshots were growing fewer and fainter. "You're the Hulk, aren't you?" She said, thinking aloud, and then laughed. Oh man, she was fading fast.   
  
Lily noticed the world going gray at the edges, and she was starting to feel warmer now; it really was kind of pleasant. She clenched her fist and punched the bullet wound in her shoulder. She had to punch herself a couple of times before she hit the right spot, and she was instantly sorry.  
  
She screamed and rolled aside as the pain that shot through her body was electric, and seemed to make her muscles convulse; maybe it was a seizure. Her vision was sharp focus red, and she could taste blood and bile in her mouth, as nausea came and went in a hard wave. She was fully conscious now, but shaking hard, and she fucking hurt! It felt like her blood was full of shrapnel, and her nerves had been scraped raw as pain bled through every fiber of her being. Unconsciousness really looked like the better of two evils now.  
  
She was attempting to reach for the rifle when the wind slammed the door open … only it wasn't actually the wind. A man stood there, dressed in a puffy white parka splattered with mud and blood, breathing hard white clouds, and aiming one of those modified AR-15s down at her. "You bitch," he spat, and she noticed he had no goggles. His naked eyes were wide and wild with fear, and possibly chemical enhancement. But he was just a pale, blurry moon in her limited range of vision. "Why couldn't you leave it alone?!"  
  
She figured she was as good as dead, unless she could pull her Ruger in time. She managed to slide her shaking hand around the butt, as he was nearly vibrating with nerves, his eyes darting wildly around the room, briefly lighting on the board before coming back to her. God, how old was he? Nineteen? In spite of her poor vision, she could see his hands were shaking.   
  
"Nobody else has to die here," she told him, using her best calm cop voice. "Just put the gun down."  
  
It could have worked, but he was just too freaked, too scared of not getting away. He tensed on the rifle, and his upper lip curled like the high school bully he must have been in another life. "I didn't wanna be a cop killer! You made me do this!"  
  
Before she could find out which one of them was quicker on the trigger, it was all over.  
  
He came in like a shadow, dark and swift, and even though he must have seen him in his peripheral vision, the gunman could not react fast enough, could not even turn around. Logan was behind him in the space between seconds, grabbed his head, and yanked. The crack was as loud as a rifle shot, and the boy's body jerked once before Logan let him go and he collapsed to the floor, as boneless as a rag doll, head lolling at an angle charitably described as wrong. From zero to dead in a second. Well, he didn't suffer - she'd never seen a neck broken so cleanly, with such precision and savage intent.  
  
Maybe consciously Logan had no idea what he was doing, but someone had sure trained him well.  
  
He looked down at her, huffing breath of steam like a dragon, like he had been running a marathon - and perhaps he had. How much ground had he covered in almost no time at all? And no more guns fired. Her head swum as she tried to calculate how many gunmen had been out there, armed with these rifles, and maybe at least one more with night vision goggles … no, it was impossible. He had no weapon; he couldn't have killed them all, gotten behind them and snapped their spines clean. (Yes, he had a weapon. He was the weapon. Wasn't that abundantly clear now?) He must have known some of them; he must have called them off.  
  
But even she could see he was covered in blood, and his shirts were torn with bullet holes. He'd been shot several times in the torso, and blood was splashed over his face like morning rain. How much of it was his? "One got away," he said, his voice sounding taut with rage. "One broke for a vehicle while this one came this way. I - I decided to get this one first."  
  
It almost sounded like he was apologizing. "Sorry for saving your life - won't happen again." "They'll get him," she assured him. "He can't go far, not even on a snowmobile." She let go of her Ruger, but with a reluctance even she found surprising. Was she thinking of shooting Logan herself? Maybe he could have incapacitated the kid rather than kill him, maybe. In time to stop him from shooting her? She didn't know. She knew, if he had been a cop, she wouldn't have questioned the shot. She was planning to shoot the kid herself.  
  
She attempted to push herself up to her knees as the whine of fire engine and emergency sirens doppled closer - the cavalry, a tad late, but still welcome. Logan seemed torn, and looked between the open door and her as if trying to decide whether to stay and help, or bolt, run from the thing that haunted him, the people that scared him. "Go if you hafta," she said, feeling alarmingly dizzy, even though she hadn't quite mastered sitting up just yet. "They're here, I'm good, you weren't here." She didn't know how she'd explain this in her report, but she figured she'd worry about it only if she lived. No point otherwise.  
  
She saw the shock in his posture first, before she could make out his face. He didn't believe she had opened the metaphorical door to him; she had told him to walk. It only now occurred to her he had been shot, he needed medical attention, he could go out in the night and die … but for some reason, she thought he was fine. No matter that his shirt had been shredded by multiple impacts, several quite close to the "kill zone" in target shooting; she really thought that he was okay in spite of it. It made no sense, but he made no sense. None at all.  
  
Her glove skidded on her own blood on the floor, and she nearly hit the floor face first. She managed to stop herself, but she landed on the side where she had been shot, and had to swallow a scream as more pain surged through her, sharp and hot. God, she was fucked, wasn't she? She survived just long enough to die before they could find her - now that was quality irony. A fresh gout of blood came up her throat, and she realized she was not going to be standing up right away. Maybe after a nap. She just needed to find the strength to attempt it.  
  
But when she opened her weary eyes, Logan was crouched beside her, looking down at her in a confusion so deep it was almost kind of funny. "You're dying," he said, like a doctor making a diagnosis.  
  
"No shit, Sherlock. I got more lead in me than a Sherman tank." She tried to laugh at her own joke, and failed. It hurt too much. "Just go already, Logan. You did good, you're absolved for whatever crime you think you committed, so get out of her." Even she wasn't sure what she meant by that "absolved" comment, but in a way she did, didn't she? It was so obvious - there was a guilt in the fear. He wasn't just afraid of people, he was afraid of people being exposed to him. And considering how he had just completely wiped out a bunch of armed drug runners, he may have had a good reason to fear people being around him. It also gave her a good, solid lead as to what his "crime" was. It was funny how much shit you realized in retrospect.  
  
That curious warmth spread over her again, but this time she didn't fight it; it was nice. She was tired of being so fucking cold, and the heat even seemed to take most of the pain away, reducing it to a dull throb. But she had to know one thing before he took off, so she asked, "Who are you?"  
  
He was still looking down at her, but she couldn't really see his face; it was just a blur, and she had no idea how to focus. But if he had said the Hulk she just might have believed him. "I'm … I'm what's left behind."  
  
The Hulk would have made a fuckload more sense than that, but as she closed her eyes and let that inviting warm darkness sweep her away, she really didn't care. Sometimes any answer was better than none.  
  
****  
  
Brent was mostly annoyed about some stupid mystery explosion getting him out of bed (it was probably a propane tank someone hadn't secured properly, damaged by cold or some idiot trying to tap it) until he heard Steve Andrychuk, resident macho fire chief and regional cook off winner five years in a row, report on the radio, "Looks like the Rose truck went up."  
  
A cold shock of fear woke him up better than Tim Horton's jet fuel grade coffee could. He picked up the radio from its cradle, and asked, "Are you sure? Reg was using that as a stake out blind."  
  
"Shit. Let's hope he wasn't still in it, 'cause it's spread all over the hills here."  
  
"Shit." Even though Brent knew the four wheel drive could handle these roads, no matter the storm (it was actually the police department's truck, but they only had the one, so during the winter months they traded it by weeks - it was the end of his week to take it home with him; ironically, it was Reg's next), he was still cautious about putting the gas pedal all the way down, as much as he wanted to. The headlight beams were barely cutting through the thick, swirling snow, and sometimes the wind blew so hard he could feel it trying to shove the goddamn truck. This was not a night for man nor beast; he really hoped it had made Reg pack it in early.   
  
The radio crackled with static as he came to the bend of Briar's corner, and suddenly Steve came back on, sounding like something had freaked him out. "Uh, get a move on Ellison - this is a crime scene. We got a body here …"  
  
The way he trailed off was even more unnerving than what he had actually said. "Is it Reg?"  
  
"No, I - no. I don't recognize him, but … most of his head is gone, so I think you're gonna need to go by fingerprints here."  
  
Oh god damn it! One murder in Bear Creek since it's founding, and now that one murder had seemingly led to a spate; some kind of violence damn had burst, and now the modern day was flooding into this backwater mountain town like gray water from a broken sewage treatment plant. He ended his conversation with Steve, and put out a call on the general band. "Nick, have you gotten a hold of the Chief yet?"  
  
It was a moment before Nick Leary got on the radio, and he sounded really stressed. Late night shift like this was the deadest time in Deadville; Nick usually caught up on his computer games during this time. "Uh, no. Company says her cell's not in service, but I think the storm's fucking up the transmission towers."  
  
"What about her home number?"  
  
"Just getting her machine."  
  
He had a really bad feeling about this all, making it seem like his gut was twisting itself in knots. Lily would be the first person out here, he knew that; she wasn't sit on her ass and give orders kind of Chief, like Milligan had a tendency to be. She was as out there as she was as just a line cop; he had never struck her as the desk type, and that's what he liked about her. Maybe she was already on scene … but why wasn't she on the radio? Even if she didn't have hers, she could (and would) borrow Steve's.   
  
"Have you heard from Reg?" he asked, pushing aside his nagging fears about Lily. Fuck, where the hell was she?  
  
"Reg?" Nick repeated in disbelief. "No. Should I have?"  
  
"Call him. If he's home, tell me."  
  
"Wh-" Nick began, but Brent had cradled the radio receiver, shutting it off. Even though he could barely see anything ahead of him, and his windshield wipers kept getting caught in sudden gouts of snow, he saw the flash of red lights, and knew there was a fire engine somewhere ahead of him. He pulled over to what he presumed was the shoulder of the road, the wheels skidding slightly as he braked, and the engine was still ticking as he jumped out of the truck and started slogging towards the scene.  
  
There was just one engine here - others might be coming in from Twotrees, but since they were on the other side of the pass, it would take a while - and what passed for an ambulance in Bear Creek. It was actually just a jury rigged SUV driven by the town doctor, Molly Sutcliffe, who may have been nearing sixty, but still showed no sign of slowing down.  
  
In fact, he found the strangely grandmotherly doctor kneeling in the snow beside the body. The fire engine was superfluous - in spite of the intensity of the wind, the cold and the snow had put the damper on the flames, and all that was really left was a twisted, smoldering chassis, so Steve and the three men he'd brought with him were standing around, looking like they really didn't know what to do. He sympathized.  
  
Molly looked up as he started slogging towards her, and Brent found it disconcerting to see this woman who reminded him of his Grandma Janey in her fur lined black parka and tiny reading glasses studying a corpse that was half-buried in newly fallen snow. "Odd angle trajectory," she said as he came up beside her to have a look at the body. She gestured at a dark smear not far from the stiff. "See? The bullet tore the top of his head clean off. A shot from ground level?"  
  
Brent did a double take at the dark smears. Those weren't brains, were they? He told himself it was the smell of burning rubber and metal from the smoking tow truck that made his gorge rise.   
  
There was a whine of a snowmobile engine, and his sudden hope that it was Lily was dashed, as he knew she would never wear a man's brown leather jacket - it was Monie. "What the fuck's happened here?" She exclaimed, even before she shut off the engine. "Where's Reg?"  
  
"Nick's checking that for me," he told her, as she got off the Sno-cat and started towards them.   
  
"What about the Chief?"  
  
He didn't know how to tell her that he didn't know where she was, that he had this terrible feeling they'd find her body - along with Reg's - somewhere around here, maybe buried under snowdrifts that had an ominous taint of red. But just as he opened his mouth to try, Clay, one of Steve's guys, shouted, "Ellison!"  
  
He and Monie both looked sharply towards him, but Clay had aimed his large safety light into the dark stand of trees, and the other firemen followed suit. For a moment, Brent didn't know what they were trying to get a look at, but then the swaying of dark branches gave way to genuine Human movement, and the glint of light off metal.  
  
Both he and Monie had pulled their guns and taken aim before the figure resolved itself into a strange man - the man the Chief had been looking for? - with a bloody face, who flinched from the bright lights, but kept coming down anyways. "Freeze!" he shouted. "Don't you - " But the rest of his commands died in his throat as he saw what the man was carrying.  
  
In his arms was the bloody body of Lily; one of her arms was hanging down, and something dripped from her sleeve with a steady, unnerving rhythm.  
  
Oh god, he had killed her. He was going to murder that son of a bitch. 


	8. Part 8

He seemed reluctant to talk, but finally the man said, "She's been shot. She needs help."  
  
It seemed to break a spell. As soon as they realized she was not a hostage, they started moving. He and Monie joined Steve's team in swarming up towards them, and while the guy froze like might run in the opposite direction, he waited until Steve and Clay took her from him at least. "Where's she been shot?" Steve barked, as he and Clay laid her out gently on a clean patch of snow.   
  
"I dunno," he said uselessly, stepping back from them. As Brent approached, he leveled his gun at the man's chest, and barked, "Don't you move, asshole." The man gave him a surprised look, and briefly scowled, but didn't move further.  
  
"What the hell happened here?" Monie continued, aiming it at the man who called himself Logan. She had holstered her gun, though. "Are you shot?"  
  
It seemed to take the guy a moment to process the question; he seemed startled by the noise and the people. "Nuh,'m okay."  
  
Monie scoffed, and gestured at his torn, bloody clothing. "Fuck you, macho man."  
  
As Molly joined the chaotic scrum, Brent was startled by movement, as Lily came to and weakly slapped at Steve's hand as he tried to unzip her parka. "-bring me out into the fucking snow -" she grumbled, partially opening her eyes, They were glassy, and looked shot through with red, as if her blood vessels had burst en masse. She looked just barely conscious, and only marginally aware of everyone around her.  
  
"Where have you been shot, love?" Molly asked, crouching down and grabbing her hand.  
  
She huffed a breath of pure white air. "Shoulder, side … maybe leg and back, I'm not sure."  
  
"Can you feel you arms and legs?"  
  
"Fuck yeah. Wish I didn't." she attempted to look around, but Brent had the sick feeling she wasn't really seeing much; her eyes seemed to roll, unable to focus on anything specific. "Logan here?"  
  
He almost came closer, but Brent waggled his gun to remind him he was covered. He scowled at him once more, and said, "Yeah."  
  
"Tell 'em bud, just don't stand there," she said, as Molly seemed to take her pulse.  
  
Logan hesitated and scratched his cheek, making dried blood flake off, and looked down at his feet like a little boy before he muttered, "One of them got away, headin' hard to the Southeast, on the other side of the trees."  
  
"One of them?" Monie repeated. "One of the gunmen?"  
  
Logan just nodded.  
  
"I'll go get 'im," Monie said, slogging back to her snowmobile as quickly as possible.   
  
Brent wanted to come with her, but knew he couldn't. There was this little manner of Logan to take care of. He glared at him, and Lily coughed, the sound distressingly liquid. "Brent, don't you dare arrest him," Lily said, and he glanced down, sure she was  
  
Looking at him. But she wasn't; Molly was checking her eyes. The Chief was just guessing. Damn - was he that predictable? "He saved my life, and he showed me the drugs in the cabin."  
  
"Drugs in the cabin?" He repeated, not sure he heard her right.  
  
"Old Man Hansen's place?" Steve remarked, sounding puzzled. "Since when does that old coot do drugs?"  
  
"They've been storin' stuff there," she told him, her voice sounding distressingly faint. "You'll see it, it's -" Her voice died, just like that.  
  
"Lily?" Molly said, patting her hand. "Lily, can you hear me?" Acid churned in his stomach, but he knew Molly wouldn't ask if she could hear her if Lily was dead. "She's out again," Molly said, her voice taking on a steely, professional tone as she reached into her pocket and pulled out her car keys. She tossed them up at Brent, who just barely caught them. "You drive - boys, help me get her in the back of my truck. If I can stabilize her we'll need to head to the hospital in Winterbrook." The wind had come up just then, and nearly tore her voice away in the howl, even from this limited distance.  
  
"But I can't drive," he told her, as much as it pained him. He would have rather stuck by Lily, but the guy was a material witness at the very least; he had no intention of letting him go anywhere. "I have to-" Brent stopped as soon as he looked up.  
  
Logan was gone.  
  
10  
  
British Columbia-Present Day  
  
Logan walked into a room in the mansion he had never seen before.  
  
It was decked out in the gold and red décor of a garish Chinese restaurant, and the room was mostly filled by a long mahogany table, around which several people sat in matching chairs.  
  
Dead people.  
  
There was food laid out of the table, but an odd mélange of tastes and cuisines - steaming bowls of mashed potatoes sat near a lacquer tray of sashimi, while a quart of strawberry ice cream melted slowly beside a rack of shish kebabs and a bubbling pot of paella. Xia sat at the head of the table, eating toast with a fork, while Tom, sitting to her left, ate a fajita with a spoon. Leonie sat on Xia's right, eating chocolate mousse from a crystal goblet, while Mariko sat beside her, picking pepperoni off a slice of pizza, while Lily, seated beside her, sipped an Irish coffee. Sitting apart from them all, at the very end of the extremely long table, was Yasha, with a white plate full of blood in front of her. She looked up at him as he entered the room, and her almond shaped eyes were vampire yellow, but the rest of her face hadn't changed - it was like a transition stuck in the middle.  
  
Since she was the only one who seemed to acknowledge his presence, he asked her, "What is this?"  
  
Her gaze was level, inscrutable. "Feasting for the dead is common in many cultures."  
  
Oh, how cryptic. It even sounded like Yasha. "Yeah, for the dead. You all are dead. Do you eat?"  
  
Her gaze almost felt like a physical thing, pressing against him. "The clues are there. Put them together."  
  
He took a good look around the room, and saw that one of the chairs had morphed into Cressida, who was helping herself to a beer. Mutant Spike and Reaper were huddled side by side, speaking in hushed tones and sharing a grape Popsicle, while Shrike looked on enviously. Stryker was bound and gagged in his chair, not eating, but blood from his slashed throat was starting to spread across the dark wood towards the oasis of food in the center. No one noticed. "What the fuck are you talking about?"  
  
She didn't seem surprised; even in the afterlife, she was implacable. "We all have our secrets, yojimbo. The thing that is here is your answer, and the thing that is not is your second one."  
  
He shook his head, as if trying to clear it, and stared at her anew. "Knock off the riddles, okay? Just give me one straight fucking fact. What answer is here? To what?"  
  
Stryker's blood was now creeping towards her end of the table, and she looked down at it, noticing. She reached out and touched it, scooping some up in her cupped hand, and she poured it on her plate. "Three dragons," she said, then licked the palm of her hand.  
  
The sense that he was no longer alone made Logan wake up and tense, ready to fight, but he realized, once he opened his eyes, he was in a place to posh to fight in.  
  
"Oh, Logan, I'm sorry," Tagawa said. He was standing about a foot away from the door he must have just come in. He was dressed neatly in a crisp gray linen suit with a white shirt and no tie, looking as if he was about to go have lunch on the veranda. If the change of attire wasn't enough of a tip off, there was a mild golden light spilling in from the window wall - it was morning. "I was trying to sneak in and grab the beer can."  
  
Morning, and he had fallen asleep. Shit.  
  
He sat up, feeling like a complete ass, which was typical really. That strange dream was still nagging at the back of his mind … was that a genuine dream? Something else? A little of several things? Weird. But it was always weird when he had a genuine dream that didn't involve his warped past. "Ah fuck, I'm sorry."  
  
"For what?" Tagawa sounded genuinely puzzled. "I'm sorry you slept on the couch. I have a spare room."  
  
Logan shook his head, and noticed the beer can on the floor, beside his foot. At least he had drank the whole thing before nodding off, and didn't spill any on his carpets. "So what did I miss?" He asked, dry washing his face.   
  
"Well, the lab returned some results, although they're just tentative."  
  
"Already?" He then glanced at the window once more, and realized the sun was rather high in the sky. "Oh, wait. It's afternoon, isn't it?"  
  
"Afraid so."  
  
"Shit." After running a hand through his hair, and figuring it couldn't get more messy, asked, "What did the report say?"  
  
"I didn't really read it; I left it for you. It's in the kitchen."  
  
He briefly wondered why the hell he left it in the kitchen, then figured why the hell not? As good a place as any.  
  
After a brief stop in a bathroom a hell of a lot cleaner than many of the motels he had stayed in, Logan met Tagawa in the kitchen, where the older man was fiddling with his microwave. It was a large, open kitchen of highly polished cherry wood and a large bay window looking out on an elegant garden. The color of the wood reminded him somewhat of the table in his dream, and the smell of food made his stomach both growl and lurch - was it an omen of some sort? Had Bob thrown in some prescient bells and whistles for him?  
  
The middle of the kitchen was taken up by a breakfast bar with genuine red leather and chrome stools that were probably salved from a closed diner, and as he took a seat, Tagawa slid two things towards him: a can of beer, and a manila folder. "think I'll need it?" He wondered, with a slight smirk.  
  
Tagawa just shrugged. "I just had a feeling beer is to you what coffee is to me."  
  
Did the insights ever stop with this man? He cracked open the beer, and then cracked open the folder. The first page was filled with graphs, chemical structure analysis, names with no less than twelve syllables, but finally he flipped to a "synopsis" page that reeked of toner. "Dentine, keratin, calcium," Logan read aloud, trying to puzzle it out. "The dart was bone?"  
  
Tagawa removed a bowl from the microwave, and frowned as he thought it over. "Is dentine and keratin in bones?"  
  
"No. Dentine's stuff in your teeth - and I assume they mean that and not the gum - and hair is made of keratin." Logan glowered at the paper, as if trying to make it cough up its secrets, and then noticed Tagawa had shoved the great smelling black bowl towards him. "What is this?" He asked, although he knew by the smell it was some kind of Chinese food.  
  
"Mongolian beef rice bowl," Tagawa said, taking a stool on the opposite side of the bar. "You're not a vegetarian, are you?"  
  
Logan shook his head. "Prob'ly should be, but no." Logan then noticed the red silk wrapped chopsticks sitting on the breakfast bar, and glanced up at Tagawa suspiciously. "You don't hafta feed me, ya know."  
  
His brown eyes widened slightly. "What kind of host would I be if I didn't?"  
  
Maybe he didn't adhere to many Japanese customs anymore, but that one was firmly in place. He dipped his head, and said, "Thanks. But how d'ya know I can use chopsticks?"  
  
"Would you prefer a fork?"  
  
"No, I just wondered."  
  
"I didn't know, I just knew you spoke the language quite ably, and seemed aware of our customs. I just assumed you had spent some time in my former homeland."  
  
Tagawa's gaze was as mildly curious yet aloof as always, and Logan realized he was trying to figure out if he was the "mononoke" Logan that he'd heard mentioned in Yakuza circles. Had he decided one way or another, and did he care? Logan didn't really know, and figured he didn't care what he thought, as long as he didn't make an issue out of it. He unrolled the chopsticks and picked them up with his right hand, easily picking up a slice of beef and bringing it to his mouth as he continued to read the synopsis page. The beef was really good, and the sauce had a nice kick of peppers - his nose was going to start running any minute now. "This is really good," he admitted. "Don't tell me you can cook too."  
  
Tagawa gave him a serene smile that accentuated his crow's feet, but didn't make him any less dignified. "I could build a walking mechanical dinosaur out of parts scrounged from a Radio Shack dumpster, but I can't make a waffle without causing a four alarm fire. I know a very good deli that is willing to deliver food to a rich old coot who tips reasonably well."  
  
"Does anyone buy that "coot" line?"  
  
"You'd be surprised," he replied, with a sly smile.  
  
Logan helped himself to a few more bites as he finished scanning the page. The initial analysis of the poison revealed it to be something akin to ricin. He scanned the information repeatedly, wondering what he was missing, and only belated realized he'd eaten half the bowl already. Well, he was hungry, and the deli made good stuff. "Okay, that dart - or whatever it was - was made of some weird hybrid natural material; the poison on it has some chemical similarities to ricin, but is even more lethal."  
  
"Is that possible?"  
  
"According to your tech guys, yeah."  
  
Tagawa tapped his fingers on the bar top as he thought. "I wonder if there's anyone on the mercenary market who uses darts. Many of them specialize; I could make discreet inquiries."  
  
Logan raised an eyebrow at him. "It scares me that you know the mercenary world so well."  
  
He shrugged a single, slender shoulder. "My family were Yakuza, Logan. Do I have to tell you no one leaves them? I know the mercenary market because it is in my interest to do so."  
  
Logan straightened slightly as he got Tagawa's message: he knew the underworld because parts of the underworld had been gunning for him. He may have been out of it, but he got underworlders not beholden to the Yakuza to protect him, run interference … or even more. The word "canny" had probably been invented to describe him. "You got guts, Tagawa."  
  
He chuckled, and said, "Tony, please. If I am to call you by your first name, you must call me by mine."  
  
Logan almost commented on the first name thing, but didn't - that could have been Tagawa on a fishing expedition. Besides, Tony wasn't his first name either - it was a nickname. "You can if ya want, but why would Stoff farm this out? There's no fucking way he had the cash."  
  
"Stoff?"  
  
He made a dismissive gesture with his free left hand. "The main suspect, who had the nerve to die before the murder." Logan started to flip back and forth between the pages, but made himself stop. What magical thing was he looking for? A big sign saying "Here's your culprit - he done it" ? It was a natural dart, made of materials that didn't necessarily appear together naturally, with a natural poison that was a more lethal variant of one of the most deadly poisons known to man. His brain kept insisting there was something here, but wasn't coughing it up.  
  
Then it finally hit him. "John Doe."  
  
Tagawa folded his hands together on the bar top. "I beg your pardon?"  
  
"The killer signed the card "John Doe", but it may not have simply been a taunt - it may have been a clue. Maybe this isn't about Stoff, but about him." In a way, it didn't make sense, but then again, it was also perfectly reasonable. Shit. "Do you have a phone I could use?"  
  
"I have several. Would you like my cell?" He asked, reaching into his jacket pocket.  
  
"No - a land line is more secure." Well, it was. Sometimes just by flipping the dial on your radio you could pick up cell phone conversations; it wasn't that hard to intercept wireless. But a land line had to be either deliberately tapped or a party line to be picked up by anyone else.   
  
Tagawa smiled at the comment. "You sound like a bodyguard. There's a phone in the hall, on a side table."  
  
"Thanks."  
  
"Does this mean you've found your answer?"  
  
Logan sighed as he stood, not sure how to respond to that. "I think I'm close, yeah."  
  
But the more he thought about it, the more he realized he never should have gotten Tagawa involved.  
  
***  
  
It seemed like every major city had a used bookshop like this one; haphazard shelves full to bursting with books, mostly cheap, mass market paperbacks, with comfy if homely chairs for patrons to sit in while they sampled a new find, and maybe a cat or two wandering the aisles or sleeping on a high shelf, looking at you like you were invading their privacy. These places always smelled faintly of mold and paper slowly rotting away, deteriorating in sunlight, humidity, and time.  
  
This one had a pudgy orange and white cat looking down at him from the one empty spot on a very high shelf as he pretended to peruse the titles, waiting for Brent to appear. Well, at first he pretended. But Logan found some interesting titles between all the Steels and Rices and Grishams that made him pause. For example, stuffed between dog eared copies of "The Other Side of Midnight" and "The Thief of Time" was an old leather bound copy of "Call Of The Wild". The binding was stitching, not glue, so the parchment thin pages were almost falling out, but Logan found himself marveling at it. They didn't make books like that anymore, if they ever did beyond specialty orders. And Jack London may have been kind of a dick, but this book was a classic.   
  
(How did he know Jack London was a dick? And when had he ever read this book?)  
  
Confusion aside, he decided he'd have to buy it. Maybe he could bring it back to the mansion, add it to the communal library. It was a silly, stupid idea, and yet that spurred him on to look for more books that the Xavier library probably didn't have, but should have had.   
  
Shelf scanning, he found a book of obscure Pablo Neruda poems, a former coffee table book discussing the great surrealists, with full color examples of the great works, and a classic Japanese mystery novel that he had no idea had ever been translated into English. Belatedly did it occur to him he was losing the plot - he had told Brent to meet him here because bookstores were always good public meeting places: you rarely encountered the bad guys here, and nobody really thought anything about a person entering a building so harmless.  
  
(Why did this seem familiar somehow? When had he formulated that "bookstore" theory?)  
  
Every time the brass bell over the door jingled, signifying an entrance or exit, he would subtly peek around the corner, and see if it was the cop. Finally it was, but Logan didn't point himself out - he stayed in one place, pretending to look for more treasures among the trash (ooh, Samuel Beckett), waiting for Brent to find him.  
  
Inevitably he did, and played his part to perfection, casually strolling up the aisle, pretending to scan the shelves himself. Although dressed casually in a white shirt and chinos under his ubiquitous London Fog trench coat, everything about him screamed "cop" - after a while, you became your job too indelibly to ever be separated from it. "Never fancied you as a bibliophile," he admitted quietly, as he came to stop right next to him. They were standing shoulder to shoulder, both pretending to scour the same shelf.  
  
"I'm an illiterate, is that it?"  
  
"No, just weird. So has your contact come through for you?" They both pitched their voices low, library quiet, but in a way it seemed silly. The cashier was watching a portable t.v., and while the volume was low, you could still hear the natter of talking heads on a news show, save for when outside traffic noise drowned it out.  
  
"In a way. Tell me, did you ever solve that John Doe case? That one you thought I was guilty of?"  
  
Brent looked at him sharply, like this was a conversational one eighty he had not been expecting. "No, why? We figured he was in with the drug gang, but we never got a positive i.d. on the guy. We never got one on you either. We entered his statistics and mug shots into the national missing persons database, in case a match ever turned up, but none did."  
  
That should have struck him as curious, but why would it? In spite of what books, movies, and television would tell you, some crimes did go unsolved; some people simply slipped through the cracks of the world and disappeared, un-remarked and so quickly forgotten it was clear there had been no one to remember them in the first place. And Logan knew that well, because he was one of those people; he was also one of those crimes, technically unsolved, and always un-avenged. "What about the murder weapon? Did you ever find that?"  
  
Brent nodded, pulling down a dog eared copy of "The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy" from the middle shelf. "Yeah. The guy Lily killed had a weird ass military knife on 'im. It was made of some super tough alloy that always remained sharp; to demonstrate, the coroner stabbed it through a cement wall - it cut through it as cleanly as butter, and not only was it undamaged, but still sharp. It was un-fucking-believable. No wonder it cut through that guy's ribs like there was nothing there."  
  
"Adamantium," Logan sighed, feeling a gnawing in his gut that had nothing to do with the hot peppers from the Mongolian beef. "The metal is called adamantium."  
  
Brent gave him a sidelong glance, rifling through the paperback. "How d'ya know that?"  
  
"Let's just say I have an intimate familiarity with it. Do you know how these guys got such a knife? They can't be on the market."  
  
He stared at him like he wanted to ask more questions about how he knew of adamantium, but seemed to understand that Logan wasn't going to give him what he wanted, no matter the third degree. "An army supply depot was ripped off about a week before the incident, but that's all we ever learned: they never told us what equipment was taken or how much. But we figured the night vision goggles, the rifles, the knives, all had to be from the army stash. Monie always felt that they got away with top secret stuff, so that's why they never gave us a full inventory, but she loved her conspiracy theories. I figured it was just the military looking down their noses at us again."  
  
The final penny dropped. Oh, those stupid bastards - they ripped off equipment bound for the Organization. They were so dead it wasn't funny.  
  
Nor were they the only ones bound to die.  
  
"Go back to work, Brent, and close Lily's case."  
  
This time he turned to face him, giving him the full power of his glare. "Excuse me?"  
  
"You heard me; do it. And maybe put in some overtime tonight, stay around your fellow cops as long as possible, and if you have any routines, break them."  
  
"What the fuck are you talking about? What is going on?"  
  
"You don't wanna know."  
  
Brent's glare turned into a hard glower. Couldn't take the cop out of the man. "If you don't tell me what you know, I'll take you in for obstructing justice, and whatever else I can throw against the wall and make stick. So tell me -"  
  
"Tell you? And get you killed too?" He snapped. "Look, your friend was right - there's a big conspiracy theory here. Stoff and his moron buddies saw something they shouldn't have, so someone is cleaning up the loose ends."  
  
The expression on his face clearly said 'bullshit'. "Why the fuck now?"  
  
"I dunno; that's the one piece of the puzzle I haven't figured out yet."  
  
Brent's look could have set fire to the shelves. "Why Lily? She wasn't in Stoff's gang."  
  
"No, but I'm sure once they got Stoff to talk - and I'm sure they did - they must have feared Lily knew too much."  
  
He threw up his hands in disgust. "Too much? About what?!"  
  
Logan grimaced and looked away, at the paperbacks on the lower shelves (hey, "Shooting At Midnight" - that was a pretty good book), trying to think of something he could tell Brent that would appease him, make him drop this and go away. But he had nothing but the truth, which gnawed in his gut and made him close his eyes and try and wish it away. It didn't work; it never did.   
  
With a sigh of surrender, Logan admitted miserably, "Me."  
  
11  
  
British Columbia - 16 Years Ago  
  
  
  
  
  
At first, Lily had no idea what woke her up.  
  
It was pitch black, with only a little light from the safety lights in the parking lot bleeding through the blind slats. It didn't sound very busy either outside or in the halls, so she guessed it was very late at night - maybe two, three in the morning. Her meds were still good; they wrapped her in a warm blanket of forgiving numbness, although she got the sense they were starting to wear thin; in an hour or two, she'd be desperate for another dose or three. But while it lasted, it was very pleasant.   
  
She could feel herself floating away again, drifting off, but then she realized there was someone sitting in the chair against the wall, and as her eyes adjusted, she realized her silhouette was all wrong for one of her people. And all the same, it was a familiar shadow. "Hey Logan, did you finally show up for medical treatment?"  
  
She heard him shift uncomfortably, sit forward in his chair. "Nuh. 'm okay." His voice was still too soft, but not quite as tentative as before. Maybe he was finally getting used to the sound of his own voice.  
  
"How can you be okay? You got shot several times, like me. If you're afraid of something, the treatment's great around here - good drugs. "  
  
"If I wasn't okay, I'd be dead by now."  
  
Oh, yeah, that was a point. How long had she been here? The problem with painkillers was they could play havoc with your short term memory. "I guess so. Tell me you went somewhere. You didn't treat yourself, did you?"  
  
There was a long pause before the word "No," floated out of the darkness. His peaked hair made interesting shadows; they looked like stubby horns, or perhaps ears (Catman strikes again).   
  
"You were hurt - you can't tell me you weren't." If silence could be deemed sullen, this was. "Why are you here if not for that?" But as the silence dragged on, she realized with a suddenness that would have been brutal, had she not been as stoned as a frat boy, that he was here to check on her. It was sweet, in a twisted sort of way. If she hadn't gone after him, she wouldn't be in this stupid hospital bed, with four bullet wounds to show for it. (But what a story she had to lord over all the other cops - shot four times, walked away. Well, limped. Was carried. She could leave that last bit out.) Maybe he knew that; maybe that's why he was checking up on her.   
  
"Did they get the guy?" He finally asked, breaking the silence. "The one that got away?"  
  
"Stoff? Oh yeah; Stenz ran him down. Literally in fact. He claimed she deliberately ran his snowmobile into a tree, and caused him to break a leg, but she claimed in that storm, she was lucky not to run into a tree herself."  
  
"What d'you think?"  
  
"I think he was lucky to get off with just a broken leg." Probably Steve's sudden appearance, to see if she needed help, kept Monie from jumping up and down on his head. "He'll be goin' up the river for some time. Ellison's seeing if he can't tie him or his group in some way to the death of a John Doe we discovered recently. It may be difficult since all his compatriots are dead, and we can't challenge his alibi." According to the report she had glanced at, there were four other men found, not including the one she had divested of his brains - one of them was a local, Michael Stiles, which pretty much explained their appearance in this burgh. The four had been killed quickly, with a brutal efficiency: two broken necks, two staved in skulls, as if they had been rammed with bone shattering force into trees, pummeled with a heavy object, or fed their rifles butts at high velocity. When asked to explain their deaths, she claimed not to remember much of the evening after the shoot out with John Tarkin (the man she had killed). No one suspected her, but no one understood what the hell had happened; most of the dead men were still clutching their guns. Who the hell could have snuck up on them and killed them with bare hands or brute force?  
  
Brent suspected it was Logan, but she refused to name him. She wasn't sure how she felt about what he did, although there wasn't an attorney in the land that couldn't get him an acquittal based on a self-defense; he wasn't even armed. Honestly, she didn't want to know how he did what he did, or how he could do such a thing.  
  
According to the coroner's report, it looked like all the men died within a five minute period, probably more like four. If that was true, Logan was superhuman: faster, stronger … and impossibly lethal. She wondered if anyone even knew he was in the hospital. She bet he creeped in like a low lying fog.  
  
She sighed, scratching her shoulder idly (the stitches itched, when they didn't hurt like a fucking nightmare), and asked, for what seemed the thousandth time, "Are you finally gonna tell me who you are, Logan? Or should I guess?" 


	9. Part 9

He shifted uncomfortably, and after a very long pause, he said, "I'm just a guy yer better off not knowing."  
  
She snorted a laugh through her nose, although her drugged state seemed to rob it of all impact. "I know that now. Tell me why."  
  
"I can't."  
  
"Why not?"  
  
Another sullen pause. "'Cause I don't remember."  
  
"No, I don't buy that. You wouldn't seem ashamed if you couldn't remember a thing."  
  
"I'm not ashamed, I'm…" he floundered for words, and she let him. (Besides, she was too stoned to be much of a help.) Finally, he said, "I'm afraid."  
  
"Afraid of what?"  
  
"What I am."  
  
What did you say to that? "You're a Human being, Logan. I know that's scary by itself, but-"  
  
"I'm not."  
  
"What do you mean you're not? Of course you are! What the hell else could you be? Are you gonna say alien, is that it? Don't make me come over there."  
  
He sighed heavily, and she could hear his hand rubbing roughly against his beard. "I don't know what I am. I'm just not like you."  
  
"Damn right you're not like me. You're not in a hospital bed once removed from a stone slab." Although right now, with the drugs still in full effect, it wasn't so bad. I.v's clustered by the head of her bed like faithful attendants, and monitors bleeped along happily in silent mode, their light just blue and green enough to make everything in a half meter radius look sickly and slightly putrid, including her own pallid flesh. "So why aren't you like me?"  
  
The pause dragged out so long she wondered if she had fallen asleep. Except she couldn't have thought that if she wasn't awake. "I'm just not," he said. That was so helpful, he might as well have said nothing at all.   
  
With a sigh, she asked, "So what were you in the military? Some kind of operative?"  
  
She noticed he sat up sharply, as if she had poked an open wound. "Why d'ya say that?"  
  
"The tags. I saw the dog tags under your shirt."  
  
His hand went to his chest, like touching a secret talisman, or the anchor around his neck dragging him down. After allowing him the chance to say something - anything - she asked, "What's it say on your tags, Logan?"  
  
He muttered something that was probably, "Nothing."  
  
She wasn't about to let him get away with that. "If they are army - Marine, Navy, whatever the fuck -" (Did the Navy guys have dog tags?) "- it has your name, rank, and serial number. My granddad served during World War Two, you can't tell me that's not true."  
  
"It isn't, not for mine," he said defensively. "It just has numbers."  
  
"And a name. You can't tell me your name's not on it."  
  
"That's not my name," he growled bitterly, as if this was an argument he'd had with himself many times.  
  
"Oh? What's it say?"  
  
Another long period of silence, where the unbearable itching of her stitches convinced her she was still awake. "It says Wolverine."  
  
At first, since he was obviously talking down towards his shoes, she was sure she hadn't heard him right. But out of the two things he could have said - margarine or wolverine - only the latter made some kind of sense, although just barely. "Wolverine? That's all it says?" She saw his silhouette bob; a nod. "When do they slap nicknames on dog tags?" It was a rhetorical question, but he shrugged anyways.  
  
She wasn't about to tell him that she thought wolverines were the most nasty bastards of the animal kingdom, kind of the dry land equivalent of the shark (another creature she couldn't bear, although she supposed Jaws was responsible for that), because she didn't think he'd take that information well. But how could you like those vicious little things? Even cougars were afraid of them, and they were almost four times their size. To be called a wolverine was, in her book, a huge insult; it was like calling someone a psychopath. But if she thought about it in a logical way, it kind of made sense that someone would call him that. He was definitely a survivor, and it was easy to characterize his dispatching of the gunmen as vicious (and they had a "size" advantage as well - they had semi-automatic weapons), and what the fuck was up with all that 'smelling" things? Wolverine's were known for their sharp sense of smell, so that fit (maybe). Also, didn't they have remarkable stamina - couldn't they travel an entire mountain range with little trouble? That tracked too.   
  
But it also made her wonder anew what the fuck he was. So, the army - she was just going to assume the army - had this guy, trained him to be a killer (the guy knew damn well what he was doing - rage alone wasn't enough to make you lethal, not in plain old hand to hand combat; it wasn't as easy to take down an armed opponent as some self-defense classes would teach you. You needed training and skills, and Logan obviously had them in spades), and then … what? She knew Monie would say 'Secret project - they messed with his mind. He probably knew too much," but in spite of Monie's entertaining flights of fancy, things like that didn't happen in real life. Sure, the army fucked up, and desperately covered up its mistakes rather than acknowledging them, but almost all bureaucracies did. He could have been a part of something that fucked him up in an unexpected way, and they - what, abandoned him? It was possible, though unlikely. The most plausible scenario was they locked him up in a military hospital and he escaped, but now that he was out, they weren't going to acknowledge their responsibility for him. Clearly he could be extremely dangerous, more than she ever credited him with, and yet she assumed if they thought he was going to turn serial killer, they'd have made a conscious effort to round him up, maybe using a bullshit cover story. So, where were they? They must have thought he was more of a danger to himself than anyone else. But why then call him wolverine? Why give him dog tags to remind him, rub it in his face? They might as well have stamped "killer" on them and sent him on his way.  
  
"I don't wanna hurt anyone," Logan said, as if reading her thoughts. She heard his boots scuff nervously on the floor. "But I wanna be left alone."  
  
"Fair enough. So why not do what most people do nowadays? Hide in plain sight. It's safer in a crowd anyways. That way whoever's after ya will have a harder time getting to you, as long as they don't want people to possibly capture it all on videotape and sell it to a cable news network. And I'm just guessin' here that's not what they want. By isolating yourself, you're doing half their job for them."  
  
He nodded, but didn't say anything. She had a feeling she was being politely dismissed. After letting the time drag - did this guy have no social skills at all? - she pointed out, "We could run the numbers on the tags, see if we can get a match. You could be in a military database somewhere."  
  
He shook his head emphatically. "No, I … I don't want them to know I'm still alive."  
  
That was such a curious thing to say she considered it a moment. Any other way to take that? No, probably not. "Are you saying they think you're dead, or they tried to kill you?"  
  
Another big ass pause. "I dunno. Maybe both."  
  
"Why would they do that?"  
  
You could park a truck in his pauses, and it was getting really annoying." I dunno. I'm a freak."  
  
"Why are you a freak? And if you say "I dunno" again I'm throwing an i.v. stand at you."  
  
He scoffed humorlessly. "Haven't you guessed by now?"  
  
He had a point. Shouldn't it have been obvious? He was alive and breathing, after freezing his ass off, after starving, after taking several bullets to the body; not just alive, but perfectly fine - he was the epitome of physical health. (And he looked pretty damn good in a general sense, although she wouldn't go as far as Monie.) That itself was impossible, if you didn't count how many miles he must have traveled on foot, and his rapid, precise elimination of the would be drug barons. "Not to be completely facetious, but are you invincible or something?"  
  
He stood up, preparing to leave. "Nuh, I get hurt. I hurt a lot. I just … get better. Fast."  
  
"Ever been exposed to gamma radiation?"  
  
"Huh?"  
  
"Nothing - joke." It really wasn't fair to tease an amnesiac.  
  
Another long pause. "That's not normal, is it?"  
  
"What? Sucking up a three rounds to the chest? No, not really." It was her turn to pause. Was he actually embarrassed about this? He was ashamed of being different? Well, that wasn't right. Not that she couldn't sympathize; being half-Indian and half-white had always been an interesting experience, especially since her parents had broken up so acrimoniously and she ended up living with her mother and her very white family, that had never quite approved of the "half-breed". A position that became more undeniably clear once her mother remarried, and to a white man this time, and had the white kids her grandparents were so eagerly waiting for. But he was a white guy - he was the one group that never had to worry about being overtly discriminated against. What the hell did he have to be ashamed of? Not being normal? Not being Human? Well, he was Human, so … oh shit. "You're a mutant, aren't you?" Now it seemed so obviously she could have hit herself in the forehead, if she wasn't afraid of pulling out the i.v. tubes.  
  
She saw his posture stiffen sharply. "Wh-what's that?"  
  
"Oh, come on - you must've seen a newspaper or magazine article referring to it. "  
  
"I'm not … I don't … animal; I'm an animal."  
  
"We're all animals; we're descended from apes. Or made out of dirt, sand, ribs and slaw, whatever your religious inclination. But still animals, of a sort."  
  
"Not like me."  
  
"What makes you so fucking special?" She didn't know if the wearing off of the medication was making her more daring, or simply more stroppy.   
  
Long silence, and she was sure she had offended him. But finally he admitted, "I can't think of myself as a person. I don't know why, but Logan equals animal in my mind."  
  
It was just weird enough to be true. "Why? 'Cause that was drilled into your head?"  
  
He shrugged, his arms falling loose at his sides. "I don't know a lot, okay? I just know that this feels right." He was clearly leaving; he must have felt he had said as much as he ever intended to say.  
  
She wanted to say something philosophical, profound, or at least encouraging, but she was drawing a blank. Really, all she wanted to do was go back to sleep, even though she knew it was probably the last time she'd ever see him. "Why didn't you leave me there, in the cabin?" She asked. "I told you you could."  
  
That made him pause. He was a black shadow by the door, a slash of light from the blinds showing that - while he may have changed his clothes - he still kept that haggard looking leather jacket. "I … I tried. I got to the door, but … I couldn't. I don't know why; I couldn't leave you there."  
  
"That was almost Human of you, Logan. Maybe there's hope for you yet."  
  
He just stood there, frozen in silence, perhaps trying to discern if there had been sarcasm in her statement. There wasn't, just a sort of weariness. She was simply tired, and didn't see why a guy as obviously powerful as he was would stand for being a victim of some weird version of the Stockholm Syndrome ("I'm an animal, therefore I deserved this."). Maybe somebody fucked him up good and proper, but he must have survived them. He could survive this bullshit too, if he gave himself half a chance.  
  
Finally he opened the door and left, far more quietly than any man she had ever known, but then again, he wasn't like any man she had ever known. It fit.  
  
She closed her eyes and groaned, happy to let the narcotic cocktail pull her down into blissful nullity, but she couldn't help but wonder - for the thousandth time - how she was ever going to put this into a reasonably plausible report, and leave his name off of it.  
  
12  
  
British Columbia-Present Day  
  
He was honestly at a loss as to how he was supposed to proceed, but then he realized - if his supposition was at all correct - the mountain would come to Mohammed. He just had to make sure the mountain knew where he was.  
  
First, he dropped by Tagwa's again, to retrieve what was left of the dart, pull the synopsis page out of the report, and get Ellison's home address (unlisted - but with Tohiro's connections, he found it in five minutes). Logan decided to test a theory he had about the dart, and once that was done, broke into Ellison's split level in a run down suburb (the house itself was verging on the edge of quaint) and planted the dart and report page in the medicine chest in his bathroom. Ellison would hopefully get the dart back in the evidence locker before someone noticed it was missing, and maybe the report would give him some answers. He knew he'd be pissed off that he broke into his place, but he needed to realize - cop or not - how vulnerable he was to the likes of people him, and others even more unscrupulous. Logan then returned to Yasha's place, long enough to drop off the books he bought (all but one - he slipped a paperback into his inner jacket pocket) and make sure no one else had been there, then headed out to make sure he was conspicuous.  
  
Mainly he walked around the city, openly perusing the fruit and vegetable stands in the Asian quarter of the city, buying an over-priced, fancy puréed fruit drink from a coffee stand, wandering around a tiled mall for no fucking reason at all, until the sheer joyless monotony of the place (and its overpowering chemical/human smell) made him want to scream. That's when he decided to walk to the nearest open space, which was Queen Elizabeth Park, almost violent in its greenery.  
  
  
  
There was no denying the beauty of the place, although something about it always struck him as far too manicured, far too rigid; a Scott attitude in park form. Although it was the landscaping that seemed anal, not the land itself.   
  
The day had become overcast, although it had yet to rain, and there were a few people wandering around the massive park paths, mostly camera wielding tourist. After briefly wondering if he should send Marcus a picture of the big and aggressively shapeless Henry Moore sculpture outside the conservatory (well, it wasn't all that ugly; it was just, in his eyes, remarkably pointless. And besides, he didn't have a camera), he wandered off until he found a place to sit, near a pond but pretty well exposed to the main path. Paths crisscrossed the park like flat lines everyone was supposed to follow without fail; again, like Scott, they didn't like people getting off the straight and narrow. But Logan kicked back and pulled out his copy of Haruki Murakami's "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles" and started to read, daring the clouds to open up and pour down on him, and someone to come and tell him he had to move. Neither happened.  
  
It occurred to him he had to get more translated Murakami for Xavier's library. Okay, this stuff was probably a bit whacked out for kids, but damn, not only was this good writing, it was preparation: the strange happened regularly in his novels, and was simply accepted; no hand wringing, no "this can't be happening", no "I don't believe in fill-in-the-blank" - shit happened, deeply weird, freaky shit. But no one sweated it too much, and if some mysteries weren't answered, well, that was life too. He could now wonder if Murakami had scripted his life. It wouldn't have surprised him.  
  
Eventually it started to sprinkle a little, fat warm drops like blood, and he closed his eyes and inhaled the wonderful scent of water hitting dry stone, as well as rain hitting parched earth. He wondered if regular people got the full effect of such a thing, or   
  
if it was lost to their more pedestrian olfactory senses. It wasn't like he could ask.  
  
He stretched, aware it was later than he thought, and it was starting to get dark. Still, there was a good hour of daylight left, so the vamps wouldn't be crawling out of their holes just yet. A shame. He wondered, if he stretched this out, he could get some of the local undead in on this. The Organization had never been ready for demons, had they? But vampires were a real thorn in their side. Maybe because bullets, knives, and various technologies were never going to kill them; the more old fashioned, the better, as far as vamp killing went. That was anathema to the Org, whose mandate and slogan must have been "Killing With Tomorrow's Technology Today".  
  
He tucked the book back in his pocket and wondered if he'd have time to grab a beer as he walked out of the park, pretending to be oblivious to everything while being achingly aware of it all. He had the feeling of being watched, but he'd had it all day he'd been walking around like a tourist.   
  
Several blocks away, as he walking past one of the few pay phone booths still in existence, the phone began to ring. He paused, and looked around warily, but he saw nothing but normal pedestrian traffic on the sidewalks, and the automotive kind on the road. In fact, it was almost obscenely normal, making him wonder if it was possible to orchestrate such a thing on a large scale.   
  
The phone kept ringing, so he stepped inside the booth, and picked up the receiver. "Canada," he said brusquely.  
  
The guy on the other end sighed slightly. "Can't be serious for a moment, can you Wolverine?"  
  
"I'm as serious as a toxic waste spill."  
  
"See? You're the only one who finds your jokes entertaining." There was a crackle on the line that suggested a mobile phone, but not cell - perhaps direct satellite.   
  
"Am I a clown? Do I amuse you?"  
  
"You're trying to make me hang up, aren't you?"  
  
"I think, if you had any sense at all, you'd flee the country now." Outside the booth, a spindly guy in a rust red sweatshirt with his hood pulled up rapped a knuckle on the side of the booth. Logan covered the receiver and stuck his head out the open door. "Occupado, okay? Yer gonna hafta wait."   
  
He couldn't see the upper half of his face, thanks to his dropping damp hood, but he saw his thin lipped mouth frown, and Logan half expected the guy to give him the finger, but he didn't, just slouched off towards the bus stop.   
  
"Oh yes, you're the big bad Wolverine," the man said mockingly, voice edged with contempt. "We're all supposed to be shitting our pants now, is that it?"  
  
"I don't care what your hobbies are."  
  
"Keep your day job, … which is what exactly? Half-assed heroics with a bunch of lame freakos? That's a step down for you, isn't it?"  
  
Logan pulled the door partially shut (it was warped on its frame, so it wouldn't close completely) and said, "Did you murder her just to get me to show up, is that it?"  
  
"Does it always have to be about you?" He replied archly. Logan thought he caught a little Connecticut in his accent.   
  
"Do you know what happened the last time you fucks had me in custody? It was down in Mexico, wasn't it? Everybody died pretty gruesomely, including the computer core. A nasty business. You really that eager to repeat it?"  
  
Now he sounded a bit more interested. "How did you do that?"  
  
"Let's just say it pays to have friends in high places. So, where are the telepaths? Come on - I'm just waiting to be mind fucked here. Ravish me, ya big brute." For some reason, Bob hadn't withdrawn all his energy from his mind; there was a little blue haze in the back of his brain, glowing like an ember. He'd already figured out how to release it, and he really, really wanted one of those traitorous fucking Org mindfuckers to barge into his mind, and meet god force head on. He only hoped it was enough to make their heads explode, like Delirium. No death could be gruesome enough.  
  
The man on the other end chuckled dryly. "I had no idea you leaned that way, Wolverine."  
  
"Oh yeah. Your dad couldn't get enough of me."  
  
"This is so childish."  
  
"Agreed. So where are you? I'd rather just kill you and free up my evening."  
  
"Do you have it, Wolverine?"  
  
For a moment, he though part of the phone signal dropped off. "What?"  
  
"Although playing dumb suits you, it's not very becoming."  
  
"Does that me you ain't gonna take me to the prom? What the fuck are you talking about?"  
  
"You know damn well what I'm talking about, Wolverine. Do you think you could hide it from us forever?"  
  
Okay, he had really lost the plot. But the more he thought about it … was that it? Did that answer the only question that he couldn't answer: Why now? "What do you think it is I took from you? Beyond pride, self-esteem, balls -"  
  
The man sighed heavily. "This is truly tiresome, Wolverine. Tell us or don't - we have our ways of getting the information. Simply tell us, hang up, and walk away - we have no interest in you."  
  
Logan glanced around, watching all the people walking and driving past. Was there room in their safe lives for all this madness and bloodshed? "Fine - it's in park, buried under a huge W."  
  
There was a pause. "Was that a movie reference?"  
  
"I'm too stupid to know for sure."  
  
He heard a noise like fingers drumming on a table. "You don't really want to try me patience, Wolverine. I know you're alone, without your mutant wonder pals to help you. I'll have your brain torn apart; I'll make you even more of a brain dead moron than you are now."  
  
"You're welcome to try, fuckface."  
  
The kid in the red hoodie had wandered back, and Logan slammed the door open impatiently. "Do ya fucking mind? I'm exchanging death threats here."  
  
For a moment the kid just stood there, his sodden sweatshirt dripping with rain, and Logan saw the thin black cord running up towards his head - earphones. Could he even fucking hear him?   
  
He must have, because the kid swept back his hood just enough to reveal his eyes to him. "Technically, yeah, I do mind." He had an Austrian accent, and his eyes were a queasy greenish-yellow, with the gray pupils horizontal slits that seemed to bisect his irises. The headphones wrapped around his ears now looked like some kind of telephone device, perhaps something eavesdropping on their conversation. The wire was probably an antenna, not attached to anything.   
  
He aimed his index finger and thumb at him like a gun. "Bang, Wolverine."  
  
And Logan didn't realize the Teutonic twit had fired a needle thin, poison tipped dart at him until he felt the small twinge of pain as it slid right between his ribs, and buried itself deep inside his heart. 


	10. Part 10

13  
  
Logan opened his eyes slowly, aware that he was in a very closed space - back of a truck maybe, except it wasn't moving. He could still smell exhaust, though, and he was pretty sure the transport had an oil leak. There was a general ache around his heart, and he felt a heaviness upon him, his arms falling asleep. No wonder - the fucks put him in a straight jacket.  
  
Oh, that was fucking hilarious.  
  
"I can't believe you woke up so soon," the voice on the telephone said, right beside him. He looked to his right, and saw a pale man with straw colored hair and beady pale eyes wearing the face mask of a doctor to conceal the bottom half of his face. "But then again, I was surprised your body spit the dart out so soon. That's pretty gross to witness, you know - like a shooting in reverse."  
  
Logan glared up at him. The upper half of his body was also strapped down, possibly to a gurney. So that was a ploy? Did this look like an ambulance to everyone else? Was it assumed he was being rescued from a collapse, a heart attack perhaps? Really cute. "Who the fuck are you supposed to be - Michael Jackson?"  
  
He chuckled dryly. "I felt a disguise was in my best interest, because I'm not really sure if we're going to kill you this time. Honestly, this is a surprise. I knew your vaunted healing factor would probably compensate for Quill's poison, but not so quickly."  
  
"Quill?" He repeated, chuckling derisively. "That has to be the lamest code name I've ever heard."  
  
"I'll tell him you said so. Now, are you going to tell us where it is, or do I send in the telepath?"  
  
Logan attempted to look at his limited surroundings, craning his neck slowly and with some difficulty. The interior was really cramped - there was just enough room back here for the weasel and the gurney, but that was pretty much it. The metal interior was painted white, and where the front seat must have been was separated by what looked like some opaque, plastic like material. So no one could glance in and see what was going on? Or to protect whoever sat up front? He could see a shadow of someone up there, probably the telepath.  
  
"Having trouble moving?" Face mask asked, with a sick kind of glee.  
  
He glared at him. "You know I am."  
  
"I'm sure it's very temporary for you. The paralysis usually lasts hours in a normal person - if they somehow survive the poison - but considering how quickly you came around, you may just be out for an hour. Kudos to you."  
  
He let his head fall back heavily to the gurney, and asked, "Can you at least tell me why the fuck now? Those fucks took your shit sixteen years ago."  
  
The man's pale eyes regarded him with something like pity, and something like disgust. He finally sighed, as if somehow put upon, and said, "You really are stupid, aren't you? At first, we thought those morons just took standard armaments, and by the time we traced them, they were mostly dead. After the trial of the ringleader was over, it was no problem to reclaim the weapons from the police. But apparently there was something in that shipment that only one person knew about, something classified black. By the time we were informed, Stoff was in prison. We tore apart the hovels of all the men, retraced their steps, recovered some knives from pawn shops, but never found it. If those idiots had any idea what they had, it would have hit the weapons market, but there was no way retards of that caliber could have known what they had, nor have any idea what to do with it. So while the search continued in an increasingly half-hearted manner - it was just a prototype, and we had no guarantee they even worked in theory - it was just decided the threat level of the material had dropped to zero. As soon as Stoff was out of jail, we'd have a little chat with him, and sort it all out. Well, the idiot didn't even know what we were talking about - one of his dead buddies probably took it. And since we know you killed them, Logan - who cares that she left her name off the report? Ryan, our telepath, recognized you in Stoff's memory - we figured you took what we were after. It's hard to believe that even then you had decided to become a goody two shoes, and working with a cop. They really must have fucked with your brain."  
  
"So you did kill her 'cause of me." He sighed, then asked, "What the hell is it yer looking for? I didn't take anything from those fucks; I just killed 'em."  
  
"We'll determine that. Oh Ryan?"  
  
The plastic slid aside, revealing a rather bland looking brunette guy with acne scars, who couldn't have been more than twenty. Logan stared into his pale blue eyes, and warned, "You don't wanna do that, bub. You'll get fucked up."  
  
He sneered at him. "Oh yeah, old guy gets tortured. I'm so scared."  
  
"Your funeral." Logan closed his eyes and concentrated on blue; an endless ocean of warm, calm blue, covering his brain like a shroud.  
  
It was such a nice feeling, he never even knew when Ryan tried to read his mind - he only knew the second after he tried.   
  
The telepath started making a strange choking noise, like he was trying to hawk up a hairball caught deep within his throat. He heard facemask lunge towards the front, as he cried, "Ryan? What is it? Ryan?" From the thud of flesh against leather, it sounded like Ryan was having a seizure in the front seat.   
  
Logan opened his eyes and surged up, with all his strength, popping his claws at the same time. While the chest strap snapped like a rubber band, his claws tore through the fabric of the straightjacket like tissue. Facemask snapped his head towards him, hand going instantly to something on his belt, but Logan didn't give him a chance to grab it - he kicked out with both feet and nailed the fucker in his weak chin. There was much cracking, and he hit the side of the truck's interior wall hard. Blood started soaking into the mask, and Logan didn't know if he's broken his jaw, several teeth, or all of the above.  
  
He tore off the straightjacket and threw the remains on the bloody boss as he shoved open the rear doors and jumped out, ready to face whatever sorry ass security they had.   
  
The phony "ambulance" was parked in what appeared to be an abandoned lot in a rural area, with waist high weeds and scrub brush and pines bracketing either side of an unpaved road that was quickly turning to mud in the steady rain. A startled Quill, who was a few feet away in one of the fields, started at him with his strangely reptilian eyes, and then flicked a hand in his direction, as if waving off a fly.   
  
Logan looked down at the half dozen needle fine quills sticking out of his chest, and started stomping towards the kid. He looked even more startled, and flicked his hand at him again, sending a half dozen more quills at him. "Take a lot to put you down, old man?" He asked, taunting, but an edge of panic started creeping into his voice as Logan kept walking towards him. He reached up, grabbed a handful of quills, and threw them into the wet grass.  
  
"No, you stupid shit, it takes none. Can't you even tell a set up when you see one?"  
  
It finally dawned him that his one trick wasn't going to do a damn bit of good, and he broke into a run. Logan had been waiting for him to run, and pounced on the kid, not dragging him down to the ground but bringing him to a complete stop, swinging him around to face him. His sweatshirt felt like a sponge.  
  
"It's those other mutants you work for, is that it?" he asked, wild eyed. His fear, for whatever reason, smelled like horse piss.  
  
"Naw, it's just little old me. And I don't work for them."  
  
"You can't be immune to me," he claimed, stammering slightly. "No one is immune to me. You couldn't have gotten past Ryan without help!"  
  
Logan glared at this mewling little coward, and wondered if he could actually kill him. Better yet, he should just hand him over to Ellison as Lily's murderer … but considering his toxic power, no Humans would be able to handle him. "You killed her. I want you to say it."  
  
Quill looked baffled, his pale eyebrows arching high. "Killed who? I've killed a lot of people. You mean the pig?"  
  
That did it. Logan felt himself grow ice cold as Quill kept spewing out words, digging his own grave. "She was a fucking mundane anyways, who gives a shit?!"  
  
He slammed his claws right into Quill's slender midriff, and he gasped, apparently having forgotten that he had claws. Kind of put poison quills to shame at the end of the day, didn't it? In retrospect, it would have been poetic justice if he had clawed him in the heart, but he wanted him to know he was dead before he actually died - he had no idea if Lily even had that kind of awareness, but right now he didn't even want to think about that - so he went for the solar plexus, which was also a lethal hit, but would give him a minute. (It was his fault she was dead; they thought she knew too much.) "I did," Logan snarled in his pale, flat face. He then yanked his claws out, and Quill collapsed to the ground, boneless and without any strength left at all. Logan had a bad taste in his mouth, but he knew there was no turning that fucker over to authorities, and besides, he had tried to kill him - he just didn't know how ineffective it would be.  
  
He stomped back to the van, where movement suggested the good "doctor" (or whatever the fuck he actually was) was up to something. He retracted his claws before ripping the door open, and casually batted away whatever weapon facemask had scrounged before grabbing him by the collar and tossing him out onto the muddy road.   
  
"Yuh couldn't haf," he mumbled, his syllables mushy. "The pusin wuld work on yuh -"  
  
"Newsflash, asshole. The poison would only work on me if it was new to my system. But it seems the dart that killed Lily still had some toxin on it. See how stupid I am? Handlin' the thing, I pricked my damn finger, just like sleeping beauty. Oops." As soon as he figured out the dart must have come from a mutant, he decide to "immunize" himself. It really wasn't pleasant, he felt as sick as a fucking dog for at least twenty minutes, and he was roughly certain he passed out for a little while. The so-called paralysis, though, only lasted for ten minutes or so. It bothered him that he passed out this time, however briefly, but figured it was either because he got a straight shot of full intensity poison to the heart, or the damn dart had pierced one of his ventricles and briefly interrupted blood flow, which was always a pisser. "Oh, and one more think, fuckface - it doesn't matter if you wear a fiberglass head, or get a sex change operation. I don't need to know your face - I know your smell. I could track you from here 'til the end of time. Didn't you read my fucking file?"  
  
Facemask was still bleeding, and the blood seemed to be running even faster in the rain, covering the lower half of his face in a new kind of mask. He was pulling himself back with his elbows as Logan loomed over him, keeping pace but keeping out of general range, just in case he had any new Org toys left to use.   
  
"This is it? This is all?" Logan wondered, gesturing to the emptiness around them. "You guys really must be hurtin' from a power vacuum if you thought a telepath and a poison were enough to hold me down." But then again, maybe it was felt a mobile, small "strike team" was a better defense against a potential siege attack. Terrorist mentality. He shouldn't have been surprised.  
  
"Whud yuh duta rhine?" He asked, his eyes slightly glazed.  
  
"I told ya I had friends in high places. One left me with a little present. Now, tell me what the fuck it is you're looking for."  
  
"Fug oo."  
  
Logan reached down and grabbed the muddy Org toady by the collar, yanking him up to his feet. He weakly batted at his arms, but almost instantly gave up, aware it was futile. "You think I'm just gonna kill you, you bastard? I gotta whole night to kill, and I think it would be interesting to see how many new breathin' holes I can give you before you actually stop breathing." He popped a single claw, letting it poke into the soft skin beneath his chin, just enough to break the skin. He tried hard to look brave, but the fear was making his pupils big, and the stench of panic was almost as strong as the smell of blood. "All in the name of science, of course. Is that why you vivisected me, pumped me full of molten metal?"  
  
"Esspmental nunits fer weaponry and alturession."  
  
Logan tightened his grip, and said, "Enunciate clearly." He honestly had no fucking clue what he just said.  
  
He swallowed hard, almost gagging on his own blood, and tried once more, speaking slowly and with some pain. "Essperimental nunites."  
  
This would teach him to break a man's jaw before he interrogated him. He pondered his words a moment - experimental was obvious - and finally settled on, "Nanites? You mean microscopic machines?"  
  
He tried to nod, then remembered the claw beneath his chin. "For wepuns and genic recussrussion. Who diffrent sciencists were workin on if, an un hried oo neak heirs foo."  
  
Wow, it was like talking to a muppet after a root canal. It almost gave him a headache, but his best guess for that entire sentence was 'For weapons and genetic reconstruction. Two different scientists were working on it, and one tried to sneak theirs through.' "And no one was keeping track of dangerous shit like that? What was it in?"  
  
"Uh vile uf suspenssion food, a fird th sive uf a phen."  
  
'A vial of suspension fluid, a third the size of a pen.' "Why would those penny ante fucks take it?"  
  
"Dunno. Culdnt've nown wha ih whas."  
  
"And why did you think I would?"  
  
He shrugged, unable to give a decent answer, save for, "Guddy oo shuz." 'Goody two shoes.'  
  
"Why destroy them now?"  
  
"Effidenf. Bessides, ours unywhays."  
  
Logan wasn't sure he believed that; the guy was holding back something. "What else?" He shook him and brought him even closer, so they were now perfectly eye to eye. "Evidence of what?"  
  
His fear widened eyes seemed to bug out, and he made a choking noise in the back of his throat. As he exhaled hard as if punched, blood soaked mask belling out slightly, Logan smelled poison on his breath.  
  
He glanced down, and saw he'd pulled the man too close - one of the darts that Quill had hit him with had stuck in his chest.   
  
Logan let the guy go and he collapsed to the mud, gurgling once before he died with his eyes wide open, rain already starting to fill his eyes and spill over the lids.  
  
He looked around, sniffing the air, just making sure he had taken everybody out that was supposed to be watching him. He had, and felt disappointed, especially since he only had half an answer.  
  
So one of Stoff's stupid friends grabbed the nanite vial, not knowing what it was, and hid it from the others. But he must have never known what it was, and died before anyone could do anything with it. But surely the Organization tore apart everything that had to do with Stoff and his gang, so … where were the nanites? If the Organization decided that the prototypes themselves were unfeasible, why did they want them back so bad?  
  
Logan scratched his head, trying to mentally construct a scenario where this would all make sense, but he was at a loss. And he was roughly certain he had blown his chance to get any of these questions answered, thanks to Quill.  
  
He pulled the remaining darts out of his chest and upper arms and tossed them into the grass before he started hiking down the road. He could consider this all case closed - after all, he'd done what he set out to do; he got Lily's killer. But having only part of the answer to the mystery would bug him no end.   
  
And where the hell were the nanites?  
  
13  
  
If that bastard ever showed up again, she was going to kick the shit out of him.  
  
Helga knew very well Bob must have pushed her before he left, because as much as she wanted to worry about his sudden disappearance, she couldn't; something in her mind would not physically let her. That weasely little bastard - did he really think being her fuck buddy was enough to save him from her wrath? He should know better - he knew about Stansins, right? Passionate demons, and not just about sex either. Besides, she hadn't been in a good fight in a while, and after a while she grew itchy for one. The only good thing about being an assassin - well, aside from the money (even in the highly Darwinian demon world, it paid well) - was she could get some of her "negative" energy out on her targets. Now she had to channel it in different ways, but work as Bob's "bodyguard" usually afforded her a chance to mix it up. But now she had nothing, and swimming and surfing didn't cut it; she was going to have to get teleported to the Way Station, if only to start a fight. At least she always knew she could count on a brawl with vampires - they were, with a few exceptions - ill mannered demons, and usually itching for some quality destruction as well.   
  
She had taken to playing the stereo, letting his player shuffle through his voluminous CD collection, in hopes the sounds of his beloved tunes would bring him back. It was irrational, of course, but it wasn't like she could worry. (She was going to kill him.)  
  
She had Bad Religion keeping her company as she sat on his couch, drinking what could have been her second beer of the evening (she had forgotten), and actually wished the player had picked Mr. Bungle or something; bizarre and slightly incoherent may have been better than intelligently depressed. She could not deny that they rocked, though - excellent fighting music, even if the lyrics were more generalized hostility than personal aggression.   
  
The words reached what seemed to be an ironic point ("You create your own reality, and leave mine to me …") when there was an explosion upstairs.  
  
No, not an explosion…exactly. It was a tremendous flash of blue light, accompanied by a feeling of … what? It was like she was hit with a spatial shockwave, like reality had ripped itself apart and rather suddenly knitted itself back together again. It caused the CD player to skip; now it was The Tragically Hip playing, and she wondered if that was coincidence.  
  
"Bob?" she exclaimed, and slammed down the beer can on the coffee table before jumping up and running towards the stairs. It was equally possible it was one of Bob's enemies dropping in to mangle him, unaware he was one of the missing, or Amaranth … but since when did one of her spells ever announce it so dramatically? She was better than that.  
  
As soon as she reached the upper floor, she found Bob laying on the wine red carpet, naked, sweating, and breathing hard, like maybe he was hurt. Had he teleported in like that? That wasn't like him either - he wasn't the reality tearing type (although she suspected he could be if he wanted to).  
  
"Bob? Where the fuck have you been?" She exclaimed, her brain allowing only the anger through - concern seemed off limits.  
  
He glanced up at her, and his eyes were still all blue, the whites and what passed for his pupil slowly surfacing, like flotsam in a calm sea. "Aww hon, sorry about that. Been gettin' spanked by the Powers That Be."  
  
How did you respond to a statement like that? (She could have been dating just another demon, but no, she had to end up with one that was somehow quasi-divine…) "Why? What did you do this time?"  
  
"Killed one of their mistakes."  
  
"When?"  
  
He waved a hand in the air, as if shooing away gnats. "Uh, umm … time I went to a heaven dimension. How long have I been gone?"  
  
Now that he asked, she wasn't sure. How many beers had she actually had? "Four or five days?"  
  
"Ah, good. Felt longer." He shoved himself up to a sitting position, but only with the help of the far well. He groaned as if in pain, and leaned his head back, closing his half-formed eyes.   
  
"They didn't actually beat you up, did they?" She wondered. She didn't think they were the type to get their hands dirty like that. (But what the hell did she know about them exactly?)  
  
He let out a huff of breath, which may have been a feeble scoff. "No love. It's just that sudden reincorporation is a lot harder than being de-corporated. Like it's easier to take off clothes than put them on."  
  
He was talking about … being rid of his body? And then "putting it back on" like a suit? Okay, wait … no. If he was a parasitic demon, the type who wore bodies like coats, she could understand that, but Belials were simply charming liars, who got a measure of psychic ability as they got older. But his "divine" part … ah shit, it was one of those questions that numerous bar bets were built on: did gods need bodies? You'd think, if they could have an avatar, they wouldn't necessarily; that was an energy switch. And most gods were just energy, so that meant-  
  
"Don't worry about it," he told her, interrupting her train of thought. "I can get rid of it if I have to, but this bod's a prison. They prefer their felons corporeal. It is me as much as everything else."  
  
She decided she was too drunk to think about it, where she actually was or not. "Have they punished you in some way?"  
  
"You mean in a new way?" He shook his head. Even though his hair was wet with sweat, his hair was all gold, bled of all brown. And it wasn't blond gold either, it was … gold gold; almost like a flattened and shredded halo. (Why had she not noticed that before?) "Not really. I think I'm on some kind of probation."  
  
"Meaning what exactly?"  
  
He sighed. "Well … ya know, that's a good question. I'm no longer sure. I think they're just gonna be watching more closely for a while, 'cause I've been naughty, but - and they won't admit it directly, but it was pretty clear anyways - they need me down here. I'm like a failsafe. Most of the big bads who might gun for them end up on my doorstep first."  
  
"You need help up?"  
  
"Like you wouldn't believe. I need to sleep for a while, get my strength back."  
  
She grabbed his arm and helped him to his feet, sliding his arm across her shoulders and pulling him up. He was much lighter than she'd ever felt, and a sudden, strange thought flashed across her mind: 'He's not all together yet.' Oh sure, on the outside he had a complete, perfect body, but what about the inside..?  
  
She felt oddly queasy, and blamed the beer.  
  
"You're gonna be all right soon, right?" She asked, if just for confirmation.  
  
"Oh yeah."  
  
"Can I kick your ass then?"  
  
"If you must."  
  
Well, maybe she could live with that. Better than nothing.  
  
****  
  
Logan was marveling over how much this dive bar looked like that one in Alberta where he finally figured out his hideous secret, when he finally spied the reflection of Ellison in the dingy Molson mirror behind the bar. "Sorry I don't frequent classier joints," he said, a the cop slid onto a hard wooden bar stool beside him. This place was the polar opposite of the one they had met in before: the dark wood here seemed to absorb light - it was neither cozy nor homey, but more akin to the slow heat death at the end of the universe. It smelled like beer, body odor, vomit, and regret to Logan, a miasma of dejection and defeat, but he had no idea how it smelled to Ellison. From the way his nose wrinkled, probably not any good either.   
  
Ellison had finally traded his trench coat for a simpler, more common fleece and leather jacket which had seen better years - the leather was cracked and starting to flake at the elbows - and he even dug out a flannel shirt and jeans to wear, but damn it if he still didn't seem like a cop. It was an air, something about his rigid posture and natural awareness, the way his eyes scudded across the entire room assessing potential perpetrators and discarding them almost in the same instant, a veteran who had seen the ugly side of people so often he now had its detection down to a science - a flawed science, because he could see the traits in nearly everyone. It was sad; it was also true.  
  
His Dudley Do-Right jaw tensed, and he drummed his fingers impatiently on the scarred bar top. He must have been disappointed there were only bowls of pretzels. "I could have you arrested, you know."  
  
"For what?" Logan wondered, genuinely curious which crime he was going to pick. He had committed so many, had Brent actually winnowed the choice down to one? Or was he going to start ticking them all off, like reading a laundry list? The awful part was, Logan actually found the thought kind of amusing. It would have been easier to list the crimes he hadn't committed - littering, public indecency, public urination, not picking up after his dog, tax evasion. (Oh, wait - had he ever actually paid taxes? Oops; another crime for the list.) 


	11. Part 11

Brent scowled at him. "You broke into my house." Ah, so he picked that one. "How did you find out where I lived anyways?"  
  
"Friends in high places." He appreciated the irony of that statement, even if Brent didn't. "The report make any sense to you?"  
  
"Not really. Who makes natural darts like that?"  
  
He shrugged. "Doesn't matter. I got him."  
  
Brent looked at him sharply. "What do you mean you got him?"  
  
He raised a sardonic eyebrow at him. "Really want me to spell that out for ya?"  
  
The bartender finally wandered over, and asked if he wanted something. She was one of those great bartenders you only found in dives like these. Her hair was a frizzy brownish-red nightmare that looked like some kind of invasive shrub had taken root in her scalp, while she had a black eye patch over her right eye, and her left eye was so hard and expressionless, it might as well have been glass. Her face was so stark and angular it could have been a mask carved from teak, and yet she wore a crocheted sweater - once white perhaps, now an ivory shading towards yellow - that showed way too much tit. Should have been enjoyable, but was actually somewhat nauseating. Brent seemed briefly stunned, although surely he had arrested worse. "Uh, yeah, I'll have what he's having."  
  
She made a derisive noise and went to get his beer, limping slightly. (Part of him was just dying to know her story.) Brent fidgeted uncomfortably on his stool. And admitted, in a whisper, "I'm not sure I wanna know, ya know? It makes me an accessory after the fact."  
  
"And before - don't forget that."  
  
He glowered at him as the woman limped back and thudded the bottle down before Brent. She limped away as some foamed burbled up the neck and started leaking down the sides. "Yer a law breaking virgin, huh?" Logan continued, looking down at his beer. "Good for you. Most cops don't last so long without cutting a corner somewhere."  
  
"Not all cops are crooked."  
  
"I didn't say crooked, but you're right. They're not and you're not."  
  
He took a swig of his foamy beer, then asked darkly, "So if I'm not crooked, what am I?"  
  
"Reasonable." He snorted in disbelief, but Logan went on. "The regular justice system could not have handled this guy; you never could have arrested him."  
  
"Why? Because he was military-industrial complex? Because he didn't exist?"  
  
"Yeah, and 'cause those darts were a part of 'im. How do you guys fight that?"  
  
Brent stared at him again. "What do you mean those darts were "a part of him"?"  
  
He sighed and rolled his eyes. Did he need to draw a map here? "He was a mutant."  
  
Brent's stare took on a hollow quality, a sort of frantic calculation behind his eyes. "He was? Is that's why the dart was so weird?"  
  
"Yep."  
  
"But then …" he petered off, his look becoming far more suspicious. "How could you get him? I mean, I don't want details, but -"  
  
"How did I take care of Stoff's gang sixteen years ago? Come on, you must have figured it out." He stared at him, and finally he did get it, eyes widening slightly, posture stiffening.   
  
"You're one of them."  
  
Logan frowned at him. "Yeah, say it like I'm a criminal."  
  
"I didn't mean it that way. Huh. I guess that explains everything, huh? The not freezing to death, the not aging … so, what's your power exactly? You're indestructible?"  
  
It was amazing how many people guessed something along that line. "I'm perfectly destructible. I just heal fast."  
  
"That really doesn't sound impressive, you know."  
  
It was Logan's turn to glare at him. "What?"  
  
"No offense, I just mean you hear stories about guys that breathe fire and shoot death rays, and you just ... heal. It's hardly ... ya know ... awe inspiring. No offense."  
  
"Whenever someone feels the need to repeat "no offense", they know its offensive."  
  
Brent didn't deny that. "So the guy that killed Lily ... he shot poison quills? Like a porcupine?"  
  
"No. Porcupines don't shoot their quills - that's a myth - and they're not poisoned. And this guy shot them out from beneath his fingernails only, as far as I could tell."  
  
"Oww." Brent grimaced in distaste. "So how did you ..."  
  
"I thought you didn't want details."  
  
"I don't. I just wondered how you got past that."  
  
Logan sighed, and took a gulp of his beer before responding. "I didn't. My unimpressive healing factor renders me immune to all toxins as soon as I've been exposed to them once. I deliberately stabbed myself with the dart that killed Lily to immunize myself."  
  
Brent moved so far back on his stool Logan was surprised he didn't fall off. "What the fuck...? How did you know that wouldn't kill you?"  
  
He shrugged. "I didn't. But odds were it wouldn't; I don't get that lucky."  
  
Brent shook his head, staring at his beer like it was a rabid squirrel, aware that if he turned that look on him, Logan would punch him. "Son of a bitch. You're fucking nuts, you know that?"  
  
"Says kamikaze peanut guy."  
  
"At least I don't stab myself with deadly poisons." He scratched his forearm almost savagely, and Logan decided it was a nervous tic, something to keep his hands busy, much like the peanuts had been. He suddenly wondered if Brent was a little obsessive-compulsive - it would explain his extremely tidy house, which was a rarity with a bachelor. After a moment, he asked quietly, "So do you know why this mutant did what he did? Was he working with Stoff?"  
  
This was why he was a cop - he always needed motive. Logan wondered how he handled the impulsive, random crimes, the ones done free of compelling reason. But maybe if he was OCD, he could sympathize with that more than most. "No. Remember that army supply warehouse those boneheads hit? They stole armaments from a secret organization, which was why the army never gave you an itemized list of what was taken: they didn't know, and those who did wouldn't tell. The mutant worked for that group. See, they believed Stoff's group stole something that was being smuggled through, but by the time they realized that he was in prison. So they waited for him to come out, and when he did, their telepath saw me in his memories -"  
  
"Wait a minute. Telepath?"  
  
"There's lots of 'em, some more powerful than others. But don't worry about it; odds are they won't fuck with you, and if they did, you'd never know." Brent gave him a look that suggested he found that less than comforting, but Logan plowed on. "Anyways, the teep got the wrong end of the stick from Stoff's recall - he thought I was working with Lily. And since I'm one of the group's dirty little secrets, they didn't like the idea of a civilian - especially a cop - knowing too much about me. So they killed her, and waited for me to come back, so the telepath could tear apart my head and see what I knew about this missing item."  
  
Brent's eyebrows furrowed as he pondered all of this. "So the telepath tore up your head?"  
  
"No. See, there are defenses you can use against a telepath, and I used one. Before you ask, let's just say I know a powerful telepath who left a little booby trap in my head for anyone tryin' to make unauthorized access. Can't explain it better than that, so just leave it. The irony here is that I had no fucking idea about the item at all until they mentioned it."  
  
"So what is it? Why the secrecy?"  
  
"'Cause I don't want 'em comin' after you either. Trust me, yer better off not knowing."  
  
"I'll be the judge of that."  
  
Logan snickered. "No you won't. Yer gonna have to trust me here, Brent. There's a lot of shit goin' on that you have no idea about, shit that would keep you up at night, shit that would turn you into the Canadian equivalent of Fox Mulder. But here's the difference between television and reality: as soon as you tried to get on their case, you would be dead. You would not see it coming; they might make it look like a drug overdose, like with Stoff, or a random, motiveless crime, like with Lily. Don't believe me? Then why haven't you found the bodies yet?"  
  
He stared at him, wide eyed. "What bodies?"  
  
"The quill guy, the telepath, the fake doctor who accidentally got on the wrong end of a quill. See, they abducted me from a public street in a fake ambulance - didn't know that, did ya? - and I left them in an abandoned lot on the outskirts of Abbotsford ... but they're not there anymore, dollars to doughnuts. I bet even all those quills I threw in the field are gone. They clean up their messes; they cover their tracks. That's why your John Doe must have been with Stoff's gang, 'cause if he was one of theirs, they'd have collected him before you found 'im."  
  
It took a minute for it all to sink in, and the horror didn't leave his face. "You're serious. But ... that's impossible. Things like that don't exist in real life. There are regulations -"  
  
"They play by their own rules; they exist outside of everyone, and are subject to no laws but their own. I'm not sure they even have a real name. I know it sounds paranoid, and you don't have to believe me, but there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than dreamt of in your philosophy."  
  
He raised an eyebrow at him. "You're quoting Shakespeare now?"  
  
"Badly. I think I muffed it."  
  
Brent scratched his head now, with the same avid ferocity that he had showed to his forearm. "But didn't you imply you're connected to them somehow? So why haven't they cleaned you up?"  
  
He smirked, swirling around the dregs of his beer at the bottom of the bottle. "Believe me, they've tried, and I expect them to keep trying. But the problem is, sometimes when you build a better monster, control and containment is impossible."  
  
"Build? What is that supposed to mean?"  
  
He shook his head. "Nothing; hard to explain. I have a question for you, Brent - what happened to the personal effects of Stoff's gang?"  
  
He looked completely taken aback and knocked loopy by the sudden subject change. He could see, behind his eyes, his mind working frantically to make a connection between these two disparate topics. "What?"  
  
"Ya know, the stuff found on their bodies at the time of death, clothes and shit. What happened to it?"  
  
He blinked rapidly, trying hard to get back on track and retain his cop implacability. "Well, if the family asks for them back we return them after their use as evidence is gone, but I don't think that occurred in those cases - most of the clothes were too bloody, or started to mildew after being wet from snow and then sealed in evidence bags."  
  
"Do ya use paper bags to prevent that?"  
  
Brent's cold eyed stare was back again. "They were so wet they kept soaking through the paper. How the hell did you know that?"  
  
"Cop show," he lied with a shrug. He didn't actually know how he knew that. "So what did you do with 'em?"  
  
"Incinerated them. What else would we do with them? It's not like we could have cleaned them and sent them to a thrift shop."  
  
Could that have been the ultimate fate of the Org's first edition nanites? "Did you ever seen anything like a vial, maybe yea big?" He measured out, with his thumb and forefinger, the rough size of a third of a pen.   
  
Brent stared at him like he was insane (again). "No, I don't think so. Why?"  
  
"Just curious." What could have happened to the damn thing? "You're not gonna use this as an excuse to quit the force, are ya?"  
  
The deer in the headlights look was back again, and Logan took a perverse glee in constantly keeping him conversationally unbalanced. It meant he was always in control. "Excuse me? Did I say I was quitting?"  
  
"Nah, but I know when a guy is having an attack of the guilts. Good cops outta stay in - we need you. And don't say yer not a good cop anymore, 'cause you are. Normal cops tried to bring this guy in, the morgue would be overflowin'."  
  
"And you're only alive because you're hard to kill." He said it in a dull, desultory fashion, as if he was still trying to wrap his mind around all of this.   
  
"Right. Consider me a mutant version of a cop. Or at least I sometimes end up policin' my own."  
  
Brent's scrutiny was palpable. "And with nothing but a rapid healing ability? You're really telling me that's all there is to you?"  
  
"Yep," he lied, looking down at his knuckles against the backdrop of the dark wood. Wow, this was the week for uncomfortable memories, wasn't it?  
  
***  
  
Alaska - 15 Years Ago  
  
He smelled them the instant he left the bar: cigarette smoke, stale beer, body odor and a kind of random loathing.   
  
"See, that's the jackass I was talkin' 'bout," the guy said. He was a man who seemed tall yet stocky, like he was twelve foot of guy squashed into six feet of available body, with a bald head as inexplicably wrinkled as an ugli fruit, and two tiny dark eyes that seemed to actually recede into his face. Five other guys seemed to grow out of the darkness of the poorly lit parking lot, most of them thick, plaid clad, and drunk. Some had axe handles, others baseball bats; all but ugli fruit was armed. "Ugly motherfucker, ain't he?"  
  
Logan figured that was probably a compliment coming from someone as butt ugly as him. "You want more, is that it?" He had reluctantly got in between ugli when he was basically assaulting a barmaid, who was barely legal and had no hope of defending herself. After the scuffling almost knocked his beer over, he got up and punched the guy in the back of the head, just hard enough to drop him to his knees. By that time the cook came out of the back, and dragged the guy outside, telling him he was not only banned for life, but if he saw him on the road when he was going home, he just might swerve to hit him. The cook called him something, didn't he? Jimmy?  
  
Jimmy (?) sneered at him. "You'll pay for that, shithead."  
  
The group wasn't so drunk that they didn't attack him en masse, weapons swinging. Logan caught two and ripped them away, but a third caught him hard in the gut, and a fourth snapped in half as soon as it hit his kneecap. The pain doubled him over - for some reason, gut hits hurt more than almost any other (except the balls, but that went without saying) - and Jimmy launched an upper cut that hit him in the jaw. There was a loud crack, but it was Jimmy who howled. "Holy fuck!"  
  
Logan rammed one of the bats back into the gut of its owner, while someone kicked him in the back of the leg, and another person just barely missed ramming an axe handle into his balls. Logan was so angry his vision was literally turning red, and he had the sudden thought: "If you do this, you can put an end to it all now." It was in his arms, a muscle was just starting to twitch, and he gave him with an adrenaline surge, clenching his fists to ram one in Jimmy's ugly face -   
  
- and with a sharp, terrible pain, something shot out between his fingers.   
  
They all froze, as if all trapped in the same paralysis of disbelief, and Logan stared in perplexed horror at what had come out of him, and was still indeed in him.  
  
Three metal blades, maybe nine inches long, the tips just barely dotted with his own blood. (But in his mind's eye he had a sudden flash of them covered in blood, dripping with it, bits of flesh so thin they were almost translucent hanging off the middle of the blades -)  
  
"What the fuck?!" One of the logger types exclaimed, breaking the spell. His axe handle clattered on the pavement, and with the hypnosis broken, all the men began to back away. "What the fuck are you supposed to be?!"  
  
But Logan didn't care about them anymore; he was barely even aware of them. They seemed to receded into the distance as he focused on these nightmarish things growing out of his flesh. The fear and revulsion he felt was almost nauseating, overwhelming. So this was what they'd done to his hands; this was the terror he couldn't name.  
  
The rednecks ran off, but he noticed only as an afterthought. He looked at his other hand, and wondering if the same thing would happen, clenched his fist and concentrated. Three more blades shot out of that hand, in a bright burst of pain as it sliced cleanly through his flesh. He could remember it too, covered in blood, the smell of carnage and death filling his nostrils, burning flesh and blood, sweat and fear.   
  
(They had done this to him. They had mutilated him; they made him a killer.)  
  
Staring at his claws, seeing the dim reflection of his own face in its cool, reflective surfaces, Logan let out a gut wrenching scream  
  
that he could feel tearing at the inside of his throat, scouring his vocal cords raw.  
  
He had been wrong. He wasn't an animal at all.  
  
He was a monster.  
  
14  
  
By the time he dragged his ass back to Yasha's, he couldn't believe how tired his body was, while his mind was still somewhat frantic, mentally chasing its own tail. He had so much to think about, he wasn't sure what to focus on first.   
  
Should he worry about the nanites? Most likely, they were toasted along with their bloody clothes. So that was the end of that.  
  
(Could he really believe it was that simple? There could be another explanation, couldn't there be?)  
  
Only back in her apartment did he remember why he'd come here in the first place: to clear out Yasha's stuff. But as he threw himself down on her bed, he realized he wasn't ready to do that just yet. He could still smell her in the pillows, and sense her in the closed atmosphere of this glorified loft. It wasn't like vampires exactly "settled down" anyways, was it? The rent was probably paid on this place for a while. He could make sure her knives and swords got a good home, which is what he promised her in the first place, but maybe he could keep the place for a while as a retreat of his own. Somewhere to go when he couldn't take the mansion anymore. He didn't think she would mind.  
  
He kept remembering the dream he had while asleep at Tagawa's - was that a message from her? Some kind of bizarre, weird ass message? How could it have been? A bunch of dead people sitting around a table … dead people …  
  
He slept fitfully, never quite long enough to dream. It was like his mind refused to settle down long enough to take a (theoretical) breath. He would wake up every forty minutes or so, long enough to watch a slice of light bleeding through the imperfectly shut curtains crawling up the wall, growing brighter as it went. Eventually it settled on the Magritte print on the far wall, the mountain that became a huge, sweeping bird. He supposed he could keep that - he liked Magritte - but something about that bird shape struck him as eerie. He still didn't know why.  
  
Finally he gave up on sleep. He got up and took a long, hot shower, aware a cold one might wake him up more, but he was in no mood for it. Afterwards, he looked in her medicine cabinet, and took out one of the pill bottles.  
  
Had he had this pain killer in his life? He didn't know, and he really didn't care. Part of him wanted to try it and see; part of him wanted to just feel pleasantly numb for a while. He failed so many people in his life, himself included, and sometimes he wondered why he bothered to get up. Of course, he knew why he did - he was too stubborn (too stupid?) not to. Besides, you had to live to spite, didn't you? The Organization was still out there, and they hadn't given up; he couldn't afford to either. If he could do nothing else, he had to outlive them.  
  
Still, he popped the childproof cap off, and was suddenly overcome by an odd smell. Were pills supposed to smell like that?  
  
He poured one out into his palm and examined it. It was a regular looking gelatin coated capsule, half blue and half white, but it still smelled strongly of … herbs; plants. Something like wolf's bane and rosemary, mandrake with a hint of garlic and … something else.  
  
He put the bottle down on the edge of the sink, and broke open the capsule in the palm of his hand. A fine, mostly white powder spilled out, smelling even more strongly of herbals, and … magic? He was pretty sure he'd smelled at least something similar around Amaranth before. So not really tranquilizers, but something mystical? Literal magic pills? What for?  
  
He popped all the caps on all the bottles, and while the scents varied slightly, they were all pretty much the same - not as advertised. Also, none of the bottles were full; most had only six or seven pills in them, if that.   
  
What the hell was this about? Would Bob know? Wes?   
  
The funny thing is, he felt almost proprietary about Yasha now, and he didn't want to tell either of them. There had to be some way he could find out on his own. "Darlin', what were you up to?" He asked aloud, as he emptied all the pills into a single bottle (they were all different colors - he could tell them apart if he absolutely had to). He wondered if there was any connection between these and that million yen note she was sent. Maybe this was the real problem with dating a member of the supernatural - they could get up to such weird shit, and never leave you an explanatory note. Unless that dream was some kind of explanation. ( "The thing that is not is your second one.")  
  
No - that still made no sense.   
  
He decided he should probably get out of Vancouver, as he didn't want to be anywhere the Organization thought he was, but something about the dead stuck in his mind and wouldn't let go.   
  
As soon as he figured out why, he called Tagawa.  
  
****  
  
Since he called before lunch time, Tony politely invited him over to lunch, and since Logan intended to impinge on his charity once more, he couldn't see refusing.  
  
Still, he waited until they were about half way through the meal before he made his odd request. Tony was as gracious as he always was, but couldn't help but ask, with a smile, "You lead a very colorful life, don't you?"  
  
There was no answer to that beyond yes.  
  
Shortly afterwards, he headed out with the equipment that Tony had his "men" bring over, and the computer printed out list of the names of Stoff's gang, and where they were buried.  
  
As luck would have it, they were all buried in British Columbia, although scattered among four different cemeteries across the province. He decided to go in no order, save for nearest ones first, and Tony was kind enough to let him borrow one of his cars, as there was no way he could balance this equipment on the back of the motorcycle.  
  
The first three were absolute busts, and he felt good about the sun setting, as he felt like a complete goober in that last cemetery - there was a burial in progress, and he got lots of weird looks from the mourners. Couldn't they give him a little credit for going out of his way to avoid them?  
  
He had to drive highway five up to Kamloops, and by the time he found the cemetery he was looking for - difficult, because it was not only on the outskirts, but was so overgrown and obviously neglected that at first he wrote it off as an abandoned scrubland.  
  
The sun had set completely by the time he found a place to park, and as soon as his eyes adjusted to the low purple light, he easily scaled the split rail fence that passed for "security" on one side. Most of the graves had been invaded by invasive weeds that grew over markers and tombstones, if indeed they were even there. Many of the graves had been vandalized, headstones taken as ghoulish ornaments by goths or demon worshippers or perhaps just plain old obsessive or necrophiliacs. He really didn't understand those who worshipped, feared, or fetishized death: not only was it over-rated, but sometimes - apparently - it wasn't permanent. Far from it.  
  
The equipment that Tony had helped him secure looked basically like a metal detector with a rather large display screen at the top, but it wasn't a metal detector - it was a "digital imaging scanner", capable of giving pretty faithful recreation of things as deep as eight feet underground. It also was able to analyze what it picked up, so it could tell you what was wood, what was rock, what was dirt, and what was … "other". By now, Logan had grown accustomed to the screen depictions of decayed bodies, usually little more than a collection of dried bones with rotting cloth as a binder. (Polyester just didn't die.)  
  
After ten minutes of tripping over brambles and clearing away nettles and thistles in an attempt to find the grave of Cole Mullaney, he was aware he was being watched, and the shift of the briskly cold wind identified his stalker. "Hon, if yer looking for a drive-through meal, you might wanna look elsewhere. I'm even more unappetizing than I look."  
  
The vampire stepped out from behind the shelter of the trunk of a Ponderosa pine, and snapped, "Human, what the fuck d'ya think you're doin'? Isn't grave robbing passé?"  
  
She was an interesting vampire. An attractive young black woman who couldn't have been older than twenty two, she had a well shaped afro reminiscent of the type Pam Grier sometimes sported in the '70's, and managed to carry it off well, pairing it with long, dangling earrings that resembled chandeliers. She wore a pink "Hello Kitty" t-shirt that was at least two sizes too small, letting her show off a taut, slender belly that wasn't precisely flat, and in her pierced navel she wore a deep red jewel that could have been a ruby. Her black pants were hip huggers, her shoes red Converse sneakers (sensible-better for creeping around graveyards, certainly), and her coat was red vinyl, perhaps an attempt to match the shoes. Her lips were painted a red so deep it was almost black. He bet she was really pretty when she was alive; she wasn't bad now.  
  
"I ain't grave robbin' - I'm looking for a dead guy."  
  
"With a metal detector?"  
  
"It's not a metal detector, it's a scanner. It just happens to look like a metal detector."  
  
"That's a good one. D'ya think I'm a moron?"  
  
"Listen to it! Does that sound right to you?" It let out a constant, low pitched hum, like a high tension wire with electricity coursing through it at the speed of light; Logan was roughly sure metal detectors made a slightly different sound.  
  
The vamp cocked her head, listening with a scowl twisting her full lips. "Yeah, well … maybe ya souped it up."  
  
He scoffed. "For what purpose?"   
  
She shrugged, making her earrings swing like pendulums. "How the fuck am I supposed to know? You guys are weird."  
  
"Look who's talking."  
  
"How the hell do you know what I was anyways? You a Watcher or something?"  
  
"Naw. Know Lady Blood?"  
  
She pondered that a moment. "Heard of her."  
  
"I'm her boyfriend." Just saying that made him feel weird - him someone's boyfriend? Especially of an undead woman caught in a god dimension like a fly in a spider web. Colorful really wasn't the word for his life; it didn't even begin to cover it.  
  
She snorted derisively. "Yeah, sure! Why the hell would she go for warm meat?"  
  
"You know what they say - once you go warm, you never go back." If someone had said that to him, he would have punched them. He really needed new material.  
  
He found a crumbling marker, partially overgrown with blackberry vines, but he could see enough of the name to recognize the surname Mullaney. He hadn't seen any others around here, so this had to be what he was looking for. He hit the switch for active scan, and waited while the machine went through its cycle, moving the circular end part over the grave in a slow, even motion. "So, vampy, what can you tell me about the risings around here?"  
  
"What?"  
  
"Do a lot of dead people walk out of this cemetery? I mean, if anyone would know, I'd think it would be you." It was easy to talk to try and cover up a sense of personal shame. What if this was all for nothing? What if he was wrong about the fate of the nanites? What if they simply burned up with everything else?  
  
But what if they didn't? Could he really take the chance of the Organization not figuring out how stupid some people - especially druggies - could be? 


	12. Part 12

She snorted in disbelief. "This place is dead, man. No pun intended."  
  
"Well, it's Kamloops. Kinda goes without saying, huh?"  
  
"Yeah." She crossed her arms over her chest, and cocked her hip, her stance equally wary and defiant. "You gotta be a Watcher. Why are you looking for a dead guy? If he vamped, you know he ain't there anymore."  
  
"I'm not a Watcher," he sighed. "And this guy couldn't have been vamped, because I killed him."  
  
That pronouncement didn't faze her, but why would it? She was a vampire, and may have had a larger body count than him. "Some kinda demon?"  
  
"No, just a Human moron." The more he thought about it, the more he realized that someone - someone intensely stupid, or possibly high - may have saw that vial and thought it was something else. Liquid ecstasy perhaps? A steroid, a strength enhancer? Shit, maybe he just thought it was Gatorade. But it did occur to him as a rather bizarre thought - what if Stoff didn't know about it because one of the guys decided to keep it for himself? What if - since it was in a suspension fluid - one of them drank it or shot it up? The autopsy - if one was done - wouldn't show nanites, because no one would know to look for them. Except, oddly enough, him.  
  
"Human morons are a dime a dozen. So why's this one special?"  
  
"Because he may have swallowed a deadly weapon."  
  
"Wow. That is stupid. On purpose?"  
  
"Think so." The scan had finished, and he looked at the screen, reading it carefully, as he was sure he had gotten it wrong. But no, the data was pretty clear.   
  
The grave was empty.  
  
Oh, there was wood, perhaps from a collapsed coffin, and more dirt than anyone needed, but no "Human" material, not even that ubiquitous polyester. He pressed down on the weedy grave top with one of his boots, and felt it soften, want to give.   
  
"Found something?" The vampire asked, trying hard not to sound interested. Kamloops must have been more boring than he thought.  
  
"No, I found nothing - the grave's empty." Now, it was possible there had never been anything in here; bodies had been known to be buried in the wrong plot, or left out to the fucking wolves in the case of several very cheap, overloaded funeral homes. Also, the Org could have already taken it … but, if so, why had they kidnapped him and asked him where the nanites were?   
  
"Maybe some culties dug him up. Sometimes they need dead people for black magic ceremonies."  
  
"You really think there are black magicians in Kamloops?"  
  
She snorted a laugh. "Ain't nothin' that interesting round here."  
  
"Heard of anything like a zombie in the surrounding area?" What if - what if the guy took the nanites somehow? And what if they did nothing, because they were meant to work on mutants alone (if in fact they worked at all)? But then he died (Logan had no idea if he had smashed this guy's skull or broke his neck - that night was a big blur), and maybe the nanites were "shocked" into working? But not as fast as his healing factor, and not with so much damage to repair even if it was. What if it eventually put him back together, and took over his nervous system, possibly bypassing the brain altogether? What if the machines animated him enough to get up and leave?   
  
Now, see, that really made no sense. But would the Organization bother looking for the nanites if they didn't work on some level? What if a dead guy was out there, walking around, because he had machines in his body keeping him going? The world's first high tech zombie.  
  
"Oh yeah, there's zombies all over the place. Check the Tim Horton's at quitting time."  
  
"Nobody likes a funny vampire. Especially when they're not funny."  
  
"Fuck you, blood bag." She stepped closer, as if trying to have a look at the screen, and asked, "So, you think someone turned the guy you killed into a zombie?"  
  
He checked the readouts once more, then shut off the scanner. He supposed he should check the other grave on his list, just to make sure two of the guys didn't share the spoils, but his heart wasn't quite in it.   
  
This could mean nothing - this could mean everything.   
  
"I don't know," he admitted. And he knew he might never know for sure, one way or another.   
  
15  
  
Bob sat on top of one of the eternal bookshelves of the dead, the living vines avoiding him like the plague. The sky above was more blue than white, only because he gave it a more azure hue. If he was going to have to wait for that asshole, he might as well entertain himself. "Chain chain chain," he sang under his breath, swinging his legs off the side. "Chain of fools…"  
  
Finally, down below in the black marble canyon that made up the limited world of Osiris, the fiend himself appeared, his skin and hair bone white against the dark of the floor and the liquid inkiness of his clothes. "Hola, muerto," he exclaimed, jumping the thirty feet down to the floor.   
  
Sy started a bit, odd golden bird eyes growing wide before his bloodless lips twisted in distaste. "You. Haven't you been killed by the Powers yet?"  
  
"They don't kill their own - you know that."  
  
"So they're actually admitting you're one of them?"  
  
"Not publicly, no." Bob reached out, randomly pulled a book of the dead off the shelf, and tore it in half, straight down the spine.  
  
"Augh!" Sy gasped, an anguished noise more than a word, and he jolted as if hit with eighty thousand volts. He waved his bony, clawed hands around uselessly, wanting to approach him but not daring. "What the fuck did you do that for?!"  
  
Bob tossed the halves of the book aside, and grabbed another one randomly off the shelf, never looking away from The panicky Sy. "You think I'm a complete fucking idiot, Sy? Who could have aligned all those morons to work more or less in concert for the end of the world, whether they knew it or not? Well, it was easy to figure out who one you broke it down to the common denominator: death. All of them fed on Humans in one way or another - and the only entity that would benefit the most from that is you."  
  
He crossed his slender arms over his concave chest, and tried his best to look both innocent and offended. "There are more death gods than me."  
  
"But none tied as closely to the Earth plane anymore, and none quite as petty and malignant." He slowly tore the book half way down the spine, making Sy's face contort in varying intensities of agony, his baseball sized eyes bulging out slightly.  
  
"Stop doing that!"  
  
"Why should I?" He continued ripping slowly, letting the sound echo in the cavernous dimension.  
  
Osiris was frantic now, nearly jumping out of his skin, flinging his hands around like they were trying to detach from his arms and fly away. "What?! Do you want me to admit it, is that it?!"  
  
"It's a start."  
  
"What the fuck else do you want, you pestilent waste of energy?!"  
  
Lovely - when he was calling names, it was time to talk. "I want - no, I demand - you help me solve a problem you probably helped, in some small way, to create."  
  
His look was pure murder, but even Sy knew he couldn't move against a Power, even one as disreputable and fallen as him. "And what exactly is that?"  
  
But Bob wasn't about to tell him until he established just how far he was willing to go to insure his cooperation. He tucked the half torn book of the dead under his arm, and said, "We both know that, being death, you yourself can't die, not until the dimension you're tied to completely packs it in. But I could still obliterate you. Sure, you'd pop up again a day later, but just think - I could show up and do it every day. Think of how much time you'd lose! And sick your Mum on me if you wish; I have friends who will happily obliterate you in my place. Ammit, Degei, Khshathra Vairya -"  
  
"I get it. You could burn down my library and waste all my time. Now get to the point and stop destroying my books!"  
  
"As a death god, as a thing tied into the very fabric of the universe, you have access to some specific things out of my reach. Like … eaters, for example …"  
  
Osiris actually reared back, a sour look on his face as if he smelled something bad. "An eater? What do you want one of them for? Who are you trying to destroy?"  
  
"No one. I just want you to help me bring back as much of Jean Grey as divinely possible, at least enough so that she can return to the Earth realm without ending the world."  
  
"Yeah, but … an eater … besides, how the hell do you think you can do that? This sounds like yet another exercise in futility."  
  
"Probably, but the great thing about being virtually immortal is you have lots of time to kill. Besides, I'm not askin', Sy - I'm telling."  
  
His eyes narrowed to the size of tangerines. "I hate you."  
  
"And I hate you too, so we're even. "  
  
"Gonna give me my book back?"  
  
"Get to work."  
  
He snarled a curse at him in a very old Aramaic, and then went back to the book on the spot lit plinth. He flipped a page or two, then asked, "What the fuck am I looking for?"  
  
"I need to get in touch with Eingana. I want you to find her for me."  
  
Sy's jaw dropped, and that was a perfectly disturbing sight. "You're insane. She's in self-imposed exile!"  
  
"I'll bring a bundt cake. Everybody likes cake."  
  
"She'll crush you, you stupid piece of shit."  
  
Bob rolled his shoulders, not quite a shrug, but close enough. "I'll take my chances. Look at it this way - I die, you don't have to worry about your library getting trashed."  
  
His eyes narrowed anew as he scrutinized him brutally. "Oh yeah? Knowing you, you told your "friends" to come after me if something happened to you."  
  
He gave him his best, insincere shit eating grin. "Would I do that?"  
  
He glared at him a moment before looking away, muttering an even more obscene curse in Egyptian. "I don't see why you want to do this anyways. Who cares?"  
  
"Do I really need to tell you what happens when a Human gets god powers?" It was a rhetorical question, and Osiris didn't respond. Bob didn't bother to tell Sy he knew this was probably like bailing out the Titanic with a teaspoon, but he had to try something before he gave up completely.  
  
And before he had to enact what very well could be the "final solution". At least the Powers would back him up if he had to take out that kind of god.   
  
16  
  
He headed off to New York, and didn't know why. So many ghosts -Xia, Yasha, Leonie - were at Xavier's waiting for him. But somewhere between Ontario and Maine, he realized that he was an idiot - his ghosts weren't tied to a single place. They were with him, in him; he never went anywhere without them. As guilty as it sometimes made him feel, he sometimes wished they would leave him be, if only for a little while.   
  
By the time he reached Xavier's, the sun was down, and he wondered - for the millionth time - if he really wanted to be here. But the Organization thought he was in Canada; it was in his best interest to be elsewhere.  
  
With a sigh, he parked his biked on the edge of the main drive, and walked up to the house, which seemed strangely imposing and gothic in the blue light of dusk. He felt even more like he didn't belong here.   
  
As soon as he opened the door, he was hit by a blast of noise - television, video games, kids talking over one another, overlapping - while the odor of many people in a confined space washed over him (somebody cleaned the windows today; they had also ordered pizza for dinner, and he idly wondered if there was any left. He hadn't had anything to eat since that disappointing "maple candy" he munched at the gas station in Maine, waiting for his tank to fill). He walked in anyways, adjusting all the while (what couldn't he adjust to, given time? Actually, he found the concept just a little frightening) and cast a glance over at the kids in the front room when someone exclaimed, "Wolverine." Some of them jumped up or shifted position, as if afraid they'd be caught doing something they shouldn't. Like he actually cared?  
  
He did see a familiar face among a sea of female faces over by the Playstation 2. Logan gave Brendan a familiar nod, and he said, back, with strained casualness, "Logan."  
  
It wasn't hard to guess why he seemed to hang out with the girls more often than not (unless he was hanging around with his boyfriend), and his fluctuating sexuality had nothing to do with it. Logan knew from his own experience - with a few obvious exceptions - women were much more accepting of men who were "different" than men were; there just wasn't any macho bullshit to get in the way. It wasn't sexist, it was just the way it was. Men kind of had to learn to play well with each other, and some never did. (He could probably nominate himself for that.) "How's the leg?" Logan asked, and then, just to add to Brendan's cool factor, added, "Been shot again lately?"  
  
He blushed slightly, embarrassed at the mention of his injury (and if anyone cared to notice, his blush was oh so slightly greenish), and said, "No, I'm shot free. You?"  
  
"Yeah. They couldn't hit the broad side of an elephant's ass," he replied, causing some titters among the younger set. He then wandered into the main house, hearing people suddenly pepper Brendan with various questions, some related to him.   
  
He was half way down the main hall, when he could smell exactly what was coming towards him from a cross corridor. Great.  
  
"You," the Boy Scout said with contempt, smelling faintly of axle grease and anti-freeze.   
  
"What, no kiss?" Logan replied sarcastically, wondering what had gotten his panties in a bunch this time. Oh hell, did they need a reason to bunch?  
  
Scott started towards him, and he added quickly, "Hey, I was kidding about the kiss."   
  
But Scott grabbed him hard by the collar of his jacket, and snarled, "Why didn't you tell me Jean came back?"  
  
Logan shoved him back violently, breaking his hold on his jacket and putting a lot more space between them. Scott staggered, but continued giving him his rigid jaw, pissy look. "She didn't come back."  
  
"Fuck you," Scott hissed, his voice dropping to a sudden, savage whisper. Didn't want the little kiddies to hear him deploy the f bomb? "The Professor told me about Mexico."  
  
"Did he?" He suddenly felt monstrously annoyed, and knew he should have never come back here. Maybe he should have gone to L.A. - Angel would've let him crash on his couch. "Then you know, so leave me the fuck alone."  
  
"You should have told me. You knew -"  
  
"That wasn't Jean!" He insisted, almost but not quite yelling.   
  
Scott went rigid, as if he was physically appalled. "How can you just lie like th-"  
  
"You know what happened, huh? Do you know that she fucking killed everyone, and screwed their computer over? Huh?"  
  
Muscles in Scott's rigid jaw jumped beneath his skin like they were receiving electric shocks. "She wouldn't do that."  
  
"And that's my point, Scooter: she wouldn't. Whatever showed up while I was flat out on that table wasn't Jean anymore, not the one we knew."  
  
"But you saw her-"  
  
"I didn't see shit. I only saw her in my head, when the base's resident telepath was mentally raping me." The use of that term made Scott flinch, and he was glad. Did that remind him what it was like? Good. If that was the worse thing that had ever happened to him, he was damn lucky. "Jean walked in on the whole thing, and stopped it. When I came to, there was no sign of her, but everyone else was dead."  
  
Scott visibly paled and looked down at the floor, shaking his head very slightly. "No."  
  
"Yes. And you know what else? You want the details, bub? They weren't all peaceful deaths, either. There was blood all -"  
  
"Shut up!" He snapped, looking like he was about to get sick. "Jean wouldn't do that!"  
  
"Yeah, I know. Face it, Scott - she isn't the Jean we know anymore. Not after what's happened to her. She's got enough power to wipe us both off the planet, and let's face it, most things that powerful ain't good."  
  
"She is not a thing."  
  
"No, she ain't. But she ain't exactly a Human anymore either. And you and I are just gonna have to get used to that fact." He started walking away, done with this conversation and with Scott's pointless lashing out, when Scott said, quietly but forcefully, "This is your fault."  
  
Logan paused and fixed him with the evil eye. Those were fighting words. "What?"  
  
"You brought him here."  
  
'Him' could only be Bob. "I didn't want to. I wanted to keep those parts of my life separate. But … hell, man, don't you remember? He saved Xavier's life if not ours too. We needed him then."  
  
"But he never left. Jean's life was too high a price to pay for him."  
  
He really didn't know how to answer that. "If Bob knew Camaxtli was going to betray him, he never would've gotten near him. Maybe you don't believe that, but I do. He would have never let her be hurt." Logan didn't add "Because he knows I'd have killed him," because it seemed unnecessary.   
  
Scott shook his head more emphatically this time, and half heartedly made a gesture with his hand before letting it collapse to his side. He didn't believe that, but he didn't know what to think, or even say. "I wish we never met him," he finally said, then added, as an afterthought, "Oh, the Professor wants to see you. He has something for you."  
  
"What d'ya mean he has something for me?"  
  
"Angel sent you something while you were gone."  
  
That was curious. "What would he send me?"  
  
But Scott started walking away, and made an airy, dismissive gesture. "Just some papers."  
  
Well, that was illuminating. Maybe he was suing him.  
  
Scott paused, though, and said quietly, "I'm sorry about … your daughter. I -" he trailed off, not sure what else to say and clearly uncomfortable. After a pause that Logan didn't deign to fill in, he just walked on.   
  
Logan didn't stop him. He felt an uncomfortable jolt of pain at the mention of Leonie, and really didn't want her spoken of in that way, not to mention her personal tragedy used as something to get pity from Scott. Now he was all pissed off again.  
  
Great - and on top of it, he had to go talk to Xavier. He wondered what wonderful new bit of shit he had for him.  
  
Two Days Later-Portland,Oregon  
  
The second time he tried, he made it in through the front doors of the blandly named "Chesterfield Assisted Living Facility". Sometimes Logan was astounded at what a chickenshit he could be.  
  
The place smelled strongly of chemicals, ammonia and bleach, Lysol and lemon, which couldn't quite cover the undertone of human urine and decaying flesh that had probably soaked itself into the pores of the building. He had to shake his head to get past the overwhelming smells - and the brief bout of nausea that accompanied it - and then walked up to the front desk.  
  
In spite of "assisted living", really this was a combination nursing home and hospice; as far as he could tell, people came to Chesterfield to die. He supposed this place was enough to make it seem like the best option.  
  
The floor was blond wood, the lobby of sofas and chair done up in neutral tones with some hint of cheerful pastels, but it still felt sterile to him, like the happy face just would stick onto the mask of your imminent demise.   
  
He couldn't do this; he was a fool to think he could do this. His heart was pounding so hard he was surprised the nurse behind the desk, with a crochet pink cardigan over a white uniform shirt, couldn't hear it from where she was sitting.  
  
She didn't look up until he reached the face oak desk, shaped like a semi-circle, guarding her from the constant siege of mortality. "Can I help you, sir?" She asked, in a friendly enough voice, but there was a guarded look in her dark eyes. They probably didn't get that many new faces around her, which made them instantly suspicious.  
  
His mouth was so dry he had to clear his throat, and then he forced out the words, which threatened to lodge in his windpipe and choke him. "I'm here to see Julius Easton," he said, suddenly aware of what it was like to feel faint. 


	13. Part 13

She glanced down at her register book, and then at the glowing computer screen on her left. He wondered why she had consult both, but didn't ask. She raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow at what she saw on the screen, and asked, "Are you his son?"  
  
The way she said it, and the look on her face, both told him his son had never come, and no one thought highly of him for it. Since he figured the guy was old enough - and he didn't know the son's name anyways - he said, "No, I'm his grandson."  
  
She glanced at her screen again, and said, "Adam?"  
  
"Yeah." Sure, why not?  
  
She put the register up for him to sign (what was this, a fucking hotel?) and she asked, with more sympathy, "Are you aware of his condition?"  
  
"No, not really," he said, signing the name Adam Easton (was that his last name?) so sloppily he could have passed for a Doctor. As for street address, he just wrote down the one for Wolfram and Hart, just because it was in California and she probably wouldn't know it on sight.   
  
"He suffered another stroke after finishing chemotherapy, and he remains highly disoriented. He can speak, but his vision is limited, especially on the right. "  
  
"Disoriented? How so?"  
  
"He often forgets where he is, what year it is. He mistook me for a woman named Katie once, and just the other day he thought it was 1973. "  
  
His heart sunk. All this way, and all this courage, for absolutely nothing. "So he's not lucid?"  
  
He gave her back the register and she stood up, closing it and leaving it at her desk as she started down the corridor, motioning for him to follow. "It really depends. He has moments when you'd think … well, he's almost okay."  
  
"How is he today?"  
  
"I don't know, I haven't been on rounds yet, just the desk." She led him down a corridor painted the palest blue, the well scrubbed floor a pale beige; it was as if everything hadn't been just sanitized, but bled dry of anything even remotely stimulating. What a depressing place. Clean though.  
  
They passed door after door, and finally she paused just a few feet from one, turning to look at him with pained sympathy. "I'm glad you came when you did, Mr. Easton," she said in a confidential whisper. He noticed some of pale pink lipstick had smudged on her teeth. "He doesn't have very much longer."  
  
Logan nodded, and wondered why the guy's family had abandoned him. This wasn't a bad place to be abandoned, but still he seemed to say there was something wrong in his family, or just a rift within it as huge as a canyon.   
  
The nurse, whose partially hidden tag identified her as Janeen Pierce, led the way in, with a falsely cheer, "How are we today, Julius?"  
  
It was basically a hospital room given deceptively homey touches such as a dresser drawer, a worn pink armchair in the far corner, and lace edged curtains over a narrow slice of a window looking out on something approximately green. He was propped up in a hospital bed, a tube attached to each arm and snaking to i.v. stands behind his bed. Monitors bleeped at a sub-audible level, and a tube beneath his nose hissed with oxygen. He looked like a mummy in training, diminishing in the ocean of starched blankets, melting like ice cream in slow motion.  
  
The mummy in the bed didn't answer her, or even stir, just half raised thin eyelids, and while it was hard to tell with his rheumy eyes, Logan might have sworn there was a modicum of contempt in that glance for the mockingly nurse.  
  
Janeen busied herself checking monitor readings and attachments, and after making sure everything was as it was supposed to be and ticking something off on a chart, she said, brightly, "I'll leave you two alone, shall I?" As she walked passed Logan, she paused to whisper low, "If he seems … ill, there's a button over the bed. Don't hesitate to use it. But I can only allow you fifteen minutes to visit."  
  
"Got it," he agreed. He was almost disappointed when she left and the door shut behind her, because he now knew it was a mistake to come here. All he could do was confuse a man who was slowly dying. Maybe if he hadn't noticed him, he could just leave.  
  
But then he craned his head up slightly from the enfolding mounds of pillows, and said, in a voice as creaky as an old hinge, "Do I know you?"  
  
Oh great. Logan shook his head. "I'm sorry, but there's been -"  
  
"Lingo?" He said curiously, making Logan shut the hell up. That was a nickname on the back of the photograph, wasn't it? Supposedly his. "God, Canuck, is that you?"  
  
A new burning started in Logan's stomach. How the fuck did he know he was Canadian? Even Logan couldn't really hear it in his own voice. "You remember me?"  
  
The old man snorted, and let his head drop back to the pillow. "Hell with you. Course I remember you, Mister Smarty Pants." He seemed to glance around the room, as if for the first time. "Shit. I got hit, didn't I? How long have I been out?"  
  
Hit? Oh hell, did he still think it was the '40's or something? "No -" he began, and then wondered why he'd try and disabuse this man of his beliefs. He seemed awake if not exactly animated; if he wanted to believe it was 1939 France, what the hell harm was it going to do? Could he die any faster or harder? "Not long," he quickly amended.  
  
Easton looked down at himself, inspecting the goods. "I still in one piece?"  
  
"As far as I know."  
  
He grunted an affirmative, and seemed to relax a bit. "Do they give Purple Hearts to guys on missions that don't exist?"  
  
"I'm sure they do, t hey just never tell you where to pick 'em up." Logan approached the man's bed warily, heart still pounding a thousand miles a minute, and he wondered if he had ever been quite this scared before. Well, when it didn't involve drowning or bone saws or needles as long as his forearm.   
  
The man cackled and glanced in his direction. He seemed to only focus on him with his left eye, which was so pale it almost wasn't a color at all. "Always were a cynic, weren't ya?"  
  
"Was I?" After a moment, he said, "I - uh, I took a bit of a hit myself, you know, and I can't exactly … remember some things."  
  
Easton's single good eye focused on him with a surprising scrutiny. "Wow, Canuck, something actually rattled your cage? I wasn't sure that'd ever happen."  
  
Logan shrugged a single shoulder, feeling his mouth go as dry as parchment. "I'm only Human."  
  
"Oh, I dunno," he said, the left corner of his mouth quirked up in good humor. It occurred to Logan his grin was crooked because the right side of his face probably didn't work properly anymore. Time got to everyone.  
  
Well, almost everyone.  
  
"You always seemed pretty super-human to me," Easton said, his voice light enough to make it a joke. "Rogers always said you must have been the luckiest guy alive. We still never knew how you got through Ardennes without getting shot. 'Member, you had those bullet holes in your jacket? But they just passed through the fabric, not you. Luckiest sum bitch alive, you know?"  
  
"Oh yeah, I'm really lucky," he agreed darkly, pulling up a hard backed plastic chair and sitting down at his bedside. He knew he shouldn't be here, that he should never have come here, but now that he was, he couldn't leave. Not just yet. "What can you tell me about myself, Julius?"  
  
He made a noise of disgust, and said, "God, how I hated that name. You guys used to call me Jules - not that that was any better."  
  
"Sorry - Jules." Up close, Logan could see his skin was thin and starting to turn ever so slightly yellow; Logan could smell the slow collapse of his kidneys, shutting down with an inexorability that would be impossible to stop. His skin was drawn taut over his skull, and yet still managed to collapse in folds on the underside of his jaw. His eyes seemed sunken into the hollows, his existing hair as dry and brittle as hay, drained of all pigment to a dull, drab silver. Veins and capillaries looked like dark worms burrowing beneath jaundiced flesh.  
  
"Tell you about you, huh? Well, lessee ... we always figgered you fer an egghead."  
  
"Huh?" Of all possible responses, that had never been on the list.  
  
"Well, 'cause we heard, before goin' in, that the Canadians had a polyglot - and I had to look that word up - on the ground, behind the lines. We figgered we'd have to coddle yer ass, ya know, keep an eye on you 'cause while you were our Rosie, ya couldn't fight for shit."  
  
"Rosie?"  
  
"Rosetta Stone - we called you Lingo on the ground, but the HQ guys usually called ya Rosetta Stone, 'cause you could get stuff it would take them hours to translate." A certain animation seemed to spark in the left half of his face, even though he seemed to be staring into a past that only existed in his head now. "But weren't we surprised? I mean, the Ruskies were a lot more vicious, ya know, but you ... man, you could scare me good sometimes."  
  
His heart skipped a beat. Here it was. "Why?"  
  
"Well, it was like you had ice water in your veins; you'd react the opposite to the situation around you. When the shit really hit the fan, you never lost your cool. It was like you weren't scared a nothin', ever, even when bullets were whizzin' past us. I asked you about that once, and you told me, with this big kid in the candy store grin, that they could only kill ya, so why be afraid? Man, I thought you'd be on point too long and lost all your marbles - you meant it."  
  
Well, that wasn't as bad as he feared; not yet, anyways. It still felt like his heart was skipping beats. "So, I wasn't a cold blooded killer?"  
  
That made Easton cackle again. "Hardly. It was just like ... you existed where it couldn't get to you, ya know? I think you said it was Zen, that you were "cultivating Zen" - we figgered it was a drug."  
  
That made Logan chuckle right along with him. "I sound pretty annoying."  
  
"You had yer moments," he agreed. "But you saved our lives so many fucking times ... oh! Do you remember that time on the Polish border?"  
  
"What time?"  
  
"Oh, we had to go and smuggle this scientist out 'fore the Nazis got him - he was a Jew, ya know - so we traveled in on foot, avoidin' the main roads and checkpoints, but we couldn't avoid this one just outside a village we needed to get into. There was this lone guard, and while we tried to get past him, he confronted us, barking at us in German and wavin' his gun around like it was his dick or somethin'. I thought we were done for, I was just about shittin' myself, but you were as cool as a witch's tit. You responded in something - ya told me later it was Polish - and even ta me you sounded politely confused. He kept barkin' and jabbin' his rifle at ya, but you kept responding in mild Polish. When he turned the gun on me, you said somethin' and made some gestures that I knew meant I couldn't speak, and was prob'ly soft in the head, so I didn't say anything, just tried my best to look more confused than scared. Eventually, you said something in the most broken, mangled German I have ever heard. Even I couldn't speak more than "Drop yer weapons!" but I knew what you were sayin' was all wrong - you didn't hit the right syllables, you emphasized the vowels all wrong, and yet I knew you spoke perfect, fluent German. But not that night.  
  
"Oh, god, the look on that guard's face," he said, and laughed, a harsh noise that turned into a brief cough. "He looked so confused and so pissed off, I thought he might start bludgeoning you with his rifle butt. Finally he waved us on, barking at us more, and you were very conciliatory and grateful. Once we were passed, I asked you what you told him, and you said you said, in German, that you spoke a little German, but only potato oven brick."  
  
"What?"  
  
"You screwed it up; you deliberately spoke gibberish in hopes he'd think you were a complete washout and a waste of time to yell German at." He chuckled in remembrance. "God, you had balls. You weren't even afraid he might frog march us back to his post; you figured you could him kill him - quietly, so it wouldn't be heard by others - before he could get a shot off. As soon as we were sure we were outta earshot, we laughed our asses off. Just about pissed myself. I can still hear that mangled German. Some of the guys thought you had to be nuts, but I loved bein' teamed up with you, Lingo. I knew, no matter what, I'd be walking out alive. It was yer good luck, rubbing off."  
  
  
  
He smiled wanly at him, trying to figure out exactly who he was from what he said. "So, I was a smart ass?"  
  
"Oh yeah. And while Steve spoke a little French, and one of the Ruskies knew a little Polish, and Dan knew a bit of German, none of us were fluent like you. When you were acting as interpreter fer any of us, we always knew you were having some fun at our expense, but of course we never knew how." He drifted off for a second, looking at s sliver of sunlight on the far wall. He thought he was gone for good, but suddenly he said, "Hey, how's that French crumpet of yours?"  
  
"What?"  
  
He attempted a sly grin, but since it was so lopsided it was a bit more hideous. "Y'know, that little thing with the nice gams who was in the French Resistance. She shot most of us down, but not you. Steve chalked it up to your luck. She make it through?"  
  
He was forced to shrug. "I dunno. Do you remember her name?"  
  
He considered it a long moment, then said, "Something French isn't good enough, is it?"  
  
"Not very helpful, no."  
  
"Sorry. I just don't remember."  
  
He nodded. That was fair enough. Even if she did survive the war, she was surely dead by now. "Umm, this might sound weird, but … do you remember my name?"  
  
Easton gave him a surprised look with his one good eye. "Your name?" He considered that long enough that Logan noticed, out of the corner of his eye, the highest monitor was keeping track of a very irregular heartbeat. No, he didn't have much longer at all. "We called you Logan. Logan … uh … I don't recall. Something Scottish, I think."  
  
"Scottish?" Somehow, he never expected that. But then again, he hadn't expected anything. Just an answer was mildly startling. "Like Mac something?"  
  
"No, not that kinda Scottish." He paused briefly. "Maybe it wasn't Scottish."  
  
"It's okay," he sighed, trying to cover his disappointment. "Just tell me I was one of the good guys."  
  
"You were one of the best," Easton told him. Although he still had his lopsided half smile, his voice was starting to fade, and there was a certain slackness creeping into his face. Logan could smell the morphine in his drip as it started to ooze through the pores of his thin skin. If someone could be said to be on a fast track to death, it was him. "It's over, right?"  
  
"It's over." In more ways than one.  
  
"We won?"  
  
"We won," he agreed.  
  
"If you don't mind, soldier, I'm a bit tired …"  
  
"No problem. Get some rest. I'll be around." Maybe he would be; he really didn't know. He felt slightly gutted, kicked around, but he didn't know if it was just the aftermath of fear, or these bits and pieces of information that still didn't add up to a coherent whole.   
  
Easton, to his surprise, patted his hand. His flesh was dry, like tanned snake skin. "I know, Lingo. We could always count on you."  
  
Logan held his hand as he drifted off to sleep, aware he could feel the small bones in his hand, barely contained by the thin, leathery flesh. His pulse was like a butterfly, almost too faint to be noticed as it beat in his blood.   
  
Logan simply sat at the old man's bedside, and waited for Janeen to return, and relieve him of duty. It was probably the very least he could do.  
  
______  
  
The End (again, for now) 


End file.
